


when you're in the darkness, only the blind can see

by aredburn



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Lots of Angst, baby fic because I can, it doesn't really make much sense, major future character death i guess??, this is a crazy thing i thought of?, will be mature later because everyone enjoys smut right
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-08 16:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8851525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aredburn/pseuds/aredburn
Summary: Sometimes you need to redo history to change who you will become. Sometimes history is the present.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I have been mulling over this idea for a long time now, probably since Noah showed up and it led me to think about "what if Lucy and Wyatt came back to discover a new timeline where they are in a relationship" (fodder for another fanfic) that led me thinking about what if the change came -from the future-? What if they HAVE to change the present, instead of just trying to protect the past, so they can have a future at all?
> 
> So now I have this and I have no idea how long it will be.
> 
> This is set between The Last Ride of Bonnie and Clyde (stars in my fucking eyes FAKE!COUPLE IS MY FAVORITE TROPE OK) and The Capture of Benedict Arnold. I have absolutely no idea how Lucy being kidnapped (and of course rescued within an episode because Wyatt (and Rufus) won't rest until she's back) will affect her and the present, especially with the many deaths in the last episode so I decided not to deal with it. 
> 
> I have hopes to finish this before the show is back, and yet I won't hold my breath. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Prologue

 

Her entire body is shaking; fingers that tremble so much she can barely keep a grasp on the tiny hand inside hers, legs that move on autopilot as she tries to keep herself standing, feet so heavy she almost believes she’s dragging herself through the mud. In a way she kind of is. 

Her hand sweats so much that her daughter’s tiny fingers slip from hers and she panics for a second, her heart beating in such frantic rhythm that it would shock any doctor. She picks her child up under flimsy protests of ‘I’m tired’, and walks more quickly. “We’re almost there.”

The abandoned building had been used for great things in the past; things she once believed were to save humanity. Oh, how naïve she had been. Now it’s just a shadow across the worn out courtyard while the entire group is falling apart, raging a war that started with the beginning of history and has been leaving dead bodies behind everywhere they touch. 

She takes a deep breath and tries to push away the thoughts sneaking in through the cracks of the wall she carefully built around her mind. She can’t think about the bodies she left behind, the lives she lost because of them and as she adjusts the small body on her hip, small arms holding on tight around her neck, she thinks not this one. She will die before she lets anything happen to her. 

The building is empty as she expected. Many people left years before, the few ones still remaining aren’t willing to risk their lives for a second class machine that nobody trusts to work anymore. Except for her because she needs it to work. It has to. 

When she enters she walks the halls and empty spaces in clear familiarity, through the open space that once held clothes that spanned through time, straight to the control area. In her rush to get there as quick as possible she misses the group of young idealists manning the equipment until she’s already down the short flight of stairs. They turn at the sound of her footsteps surprised as she raises her gun and points straight at the group. “Out. All of you.” They don’t move for a moment, staring between her and the gun hesitantly. “Now!” She yells and shoots a few times into the wall behind them. The sounds make them scramble out of there like rats running from a flood. 

She has only a few heartbeats until someone arrives but it has to be enough to send her daughter off so she hurries through the platform to the open door of the Lifeboat, her steps echoing painfully loud off the metal floor. She places her daughter on the machine and helps her inside. Her heart inflates and there’s a sudden constriction to her throat; the time machine is still exactly as she remembers – the smell of electricity and rubber and wires, the worn out foothold around the chairs, the ridiculous small space between them. She hasn’t been inside this machine in a long time, but the memories are fresh and real as if she’s lived them yesterday, as if a lifetime between wonderment and familiarity hasn’t passed. She can almost pretend she’s still naïve. _Almost_.

She pulls the belts of one of the seats open and mentions for her daughter to sit. 

“Where are we going?”

“You’re going somewhere safe.” Her voice falters, the pain swelling up is suddenly so thick she feels a pulsating pain to her head, her breath so difficult it’s as if there’s a hand squeezing her lungs shut. She can’t go; she has to make sure her daughter will be sent off.

“Me? You’re not going?” Her baby voice rises in a squeal, as children’s voices sometimes do and attempts to get out of the chair. 

“Stay put,” and she does. So young and so brave and such a good girl. She stares at her child’s eyes, bright with tears, smudged with blood around the corners. She’s covered in blood that is and isn’t hers. 

“Mommy, please! I’m scared,” she cries; small drops of tears running down pink cheeks and following the lines of her chin, tears tainted in red. “I don’t want to go alone!”

“I know you are,” she says, buckling the straps across daughter’s chest and adjusting the length so it will be tight on her. Her hands are shaking again like a drug addict on withdrawals and she squeezes them together to try and stop it. It doesn’t work. “But you’ll be okay. I promise. Do you trust me?” At the nod she continues, “I love you so much. More than anything in the entire world. Don’t you forget that, okay?”

“I love you , too.” 

“I need you to do something for me. I need you to be very brave and remember everything I’m telling you. Can you do that?” 

Her daughter nods, biting her lip to stop her crying. “I think so.”

“When that door opens again you ask for Lucy Preston and only Lucy Preston. You don’t talk to anybody else.” Her daughter starts crying again, lips quivering in fear and exhaustion. “Charlie!” She shakes her daughter a little harder than she intends, but this needs to be done. The shock of being handled in such hard manner makes her daughter stop crying and look at her startled. “Repeat with me: I want to talk to Lucy Preston.”

Her baby voice comes out in a small whisper, “I want to talk to Lucy Preston.”

She takes a folded piece of paper from her pocket and shows it to her daughter, “You give this _only_ to Lucy Preston, ok?” at the small nod she hides it under the waistband of her child’s skirt and hopes it will reach the right hands.

She moves in the small space to the controls and turns on what needs to be turned on. She can only hope there won’t be a need for a pilot for a one way trip. 

Turning back to her daughter, she reaches out to grab her child’s hands, wrapping her fingers around soft, small ones and kisses her lovingly on the forehead, lingering for a second longer, feelings the soft skin against her lips, holding to memory the baby perfume and the sweet smell that is only hers. When she feels the tears trying to force their way out of her eyes she lets go and stands, walking outside of the lifeboat. 

“Mommy, please don’t leave me! Mommy!”

She ignores her cries and wipes the tears away, swallowing down a sob. Her daughter’s panicked voice blends with the sound of shaking metal under her feet and she walks the short platform back to the control panel. She’s doing the right thing, she tries to convince herself. She has to do this to save her life and for a chance to change her present, as small as it is. 

She starts setting a date on the controls when a gunshot ricochets in the room and she ducks, trying to see where it came from. In the panic to start the machine’s rotation as another bullet hits panel, she pushes in a random date and watches the machine’s door fall closed. Her child’s pleas blend with the sound of the machine and the bullet that comes straight her.

Then there’s only darkness.


	2. One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t expect this chapter to be so long so I had to split into more chapters. I actually didn’t think the ideas I had would translate into so many pages, which means this will be a little longer than I expected. 
> 
> There will be a light in the end of the angst tunnel, just hold tight.

Being awaken in the middle of the night had become a recurrent situation; there wasn’t any specific time to receive the call requesting her presence at once because they needed to play heroes once more. It came at random moments, early in the morning, in the middle of the day, ten minutes after she had just gotten home and had barely undressed before she had to put it all back on and tell her mom duty called on her way out of the door.

So when the call came just shy of 3 am Lucy wasn’t surprised, just frustrated. Flynn didn’t exactly have a schedule to follow but it’d be nice if he decided to go back to destroy history after the sun had already risen.

“’ello?”

“Lucy, we need you over right now.”

The tone of agent Christopher’s voice was so on edge Lucy got to attention immediately, wondering if Flynn had taken the mothership somewhere he was absolutely certain to destroy history someway irreparable. “When did Flynn go?” she asked, already out of bed and gathering the clothes she had worn yesterday and thrown over the chair in her room.

“It’s not about Flynn,” that made Lucy stop in the middle of pulling up her pants and frown, but before she could ask anything else, agent Christopher continued, “We had… a visitor that has been asking for you specifically.”

“A visitor….?” She tried to prompt Denise to elaborate, but she only answered with a ‘ _just get here as soon as you can’_ and disconnected the call. After all these months working with Mason Industries, this was the first time she had gotten such an evasive and strange call and it made her worried. Flynn she had learned to deal with, in spite of his constant presence and insistence that she should understand the crusade he was going through, but now she was going in completely blind, completely unprepared.

Lucy got dressed in record time, wrote a quick note to her mother, already exhausted ahead of time with the discussion her leaving in the middle of the night was bound to start and left their house. Since she started travelling through time and came back to a healthy mother and an erased sister, she had considered moving out; the only reason she shared a place with her family was because her mother was on deathbed and the fear of one day receiving a call from her sister with the news she never wanted to learn. Spending as much time with her mother as possible was a priority and working a job her mother loved was a way to honor everything she had been. Later she understood her car crash had been a sign, fate finding a way to warn her not to deviate from the path she should follow.

So she obeyed. And her sister had been taken from her.

Lucy rubbed the locket hanging on the necklace around her neck that held the only piece left of her sister and took a deep breath. Was it fair to have her sister traded for her mother? How would she feel to have her sister back only to find her mother one step closer to death again? She wanted her sister back _so badly_ , but she also wanted to keep her mom. How could she choose? How could fate be so cruel?

Shaking the thoughts away, Lucy grabbed her car keys and left. There was no traffic this hour so the drive to Mason Industries was quick and uneventful, her gloomy thoughts the only sounds following her.

Agent Christopher was waiting by the door when Lucy arrived and the tension she felt from the woman overwhelming. She didn’t seem afraid, just _very_ worried.  “We got a surprise visit at roughly 2 am from someone that came with another time machine.”

Lucy came to a halt and turned her full attention to the other woman, “You said there were only two time machines.”

“There _are_ ,” she mentioned for Lucy to keep walking, “This one came from the future.”

“What?!” It came out in a surprised yelp, she couldn’t help it; she had thought many possibilities, from someone higher up to Flynn himself with more of his crazy demands, waiving pages of her supposedly journal to prove something she had yet to learn. Not someone from the past, much less the _future_. Not when they had the only time machine left. Lucy felt as if the very fabric of life was coming apart. Future was what they made, it wasn’t supposed to come knocking. She briefly wondered what Wyatt would have to say about fate and destiny and the future not being already written when he learned about this. Her hand itched to grab her phone and just call him.

Denise Christopher didn’t stop walking so Lucy had to make a quick run to catch up to her. 

“When did they come from? How did they have a time machine?” Have we screwed up not only the present, but the future too? She wanted to ask, but the doubt was left unsaid. Did she really want to know if the future had to be saved as well?

“From 2024. Her name is Charlie and she’s six years old. That’s all we managed to get out of her. She refused to talk to anyone.”

Blood drained from Lucy’s face and she knew she probably looked as ghostly white as she felt. “Six?” The word came out in such a whisper that either the agent didn’t hear or didn’t bother to elaborate.

They walked quickly through corridors and passed the launch pad where their own time machine was sitting askew on the platform they had built and another had crash landed against it. “It’s another…”

“Lifeboat, yes.”

“But Rufus said there couldn’t be two of us in the same place. He said it could be catastrophic.” She couldn’t stop the panic from taking the front seat and suffocating all other emotions. Her instinct was the run from there as far away as possible. Her curiosity wanted her to come closer.

“For living beings. A machine has no living parts, therefore should not go through the same process we do. Besides, they never got in contact with each other. We are working on removing the other one from here.”

“So you don’t know?” Yes, it was definitely panic she felt, her heart beating a little faster and her desire to run growing more with each beat.

Agent Christopher looked straight at her, “Yes, we don’t know Lucy.” Her honesty did not help ease her fear. She resumed walking, crossing the launch pad and going up the short flight of stairs through the control panel to the viewing room above it. When Lucy was first introduced to the company she hadn’t had the pleasure of being held inside this waiting room; instead, she had been put much against her will, inside one with no windows, not enough space to breath and with a man that seemed infuriatingly comfortable with the situation he found himself in.

They stopped in front of the door, the wide viewing glass giving them a view of the room where a little girl was curled up in a ball in in one of the black couches. Hers knees pressed against her chest and small arms tight around her legs and with her head resting against her knees Lucy couldn’t see her face. What she _could_ see were the brown stains on her clothes and matted hair and she hoped that it was just dried dirty and _not blood_. Something she had never felt before started blossoming inside her chest and right now all she wanted was to take this child far away from here and protect her until all of her cells had stopped existing.

“She got shot, Lucy.”

So much for hope…

Lucy turned to Denise Christopher and understood the look she saw in her eyes; she thought that it probably matched the shock she was feeling. “How? Where?”

“On the head.” Lucy’s blood went cold, everything she had felt when she got awaken by the phone call suddenly turned into anger, an absolute rage that made her surprised. “It skimmed her eyebrow and probably bled a lot, but caused no real damage. When she got here she was pretty much terrified. She wouldn’t let anyone touch her, so we couldn’t get any doctors to examine her. The doctor suggested sedating her, but she was in shock, crying and asking to talk to you so I went against it. ”

“To me?” There was a strange possibility she refused accept, a thought that had been forming when Denise said the girl was from almost ten years in the future that had taken roots and was starting to grow flowers. _Please, don’t make it real, please._

Denise Christopher grabbed the doorknob and turned it to open the door; Lucy watched every movement with fear of what she would find inside the room, of all the things that door was opening to, not just to a little girl, but to a life she hadn’t lived yet.

Lucy stepped inside just as the girl looked up at the sound. Her small, teary eyes went round and big as saucers, and she watched fear turn to shock and then…

“Mommy!” The girl lept from the couch, running straight to Lucy, who in a state of dumbstruck slap to the face, kneeled down to be eye level with the child, allowed her to run straight into her arms, because really, what else was there for her to do _but let instinct take over_? And found out the girl fit perfectly into her arms, tiny arms circling Lucy’s neck and holding on for dear life, so tight she almost choked Lucy out of air.

 _And oh god, she was so small_.

This time Lucy’s panic was real, not just a feeling in the back of her head that threatened to smash everything keeping it at bay. She had to get out of there, she had to _breathe_ so Lucy let the girl go and stood, trying to pretend the look on the little girl’s face didn’t hurt her in ways she couldn’t understand, tried to pretend her pleads of ‘don’t leave me again’ didn’t tear something deep inside her as she left the room in a hurry.

Lucy didn’t go far, just found an empty corner where she could rest against and breathe slowly; she was back on the icy road, a young girl just out of adolescence trying to follow a dream and being careened off the road back into adulthood and responsibility. She felt like she was inside that car again, the steering wheel out of her control, the road under her car pushing her  in the wrong direction until she was flying, until she was crying in despair because she _didn’t want to die_.

Whose life was being traded by this child’s? Would she go home to find no mother? Could the future even affect the present? How many stories would she have to rewrite from now on to change whatever happened in the future so _her child_ won’t be sent back?

For a moment, for a split second of a moment she wished she had never accepted this job, that she had had the strength to say no and carry on with her life. Unfair and childish, but she let the thoughts come knowing she would bitterly regret them later.

Because a six year old had been _shot on the head_ and she was panicking over the unfairness of her life.


	3. Two

 If she had to be fair, she needed a lot more than 5 minutes to make the world stop spinning around her, but at the moment her priority wasn’t her well-being. Lucy took a deep breath and told herself to just _get it together_.

She found agent Christopher sitting on the couch next to the little girl, her hand gently holding the smaller one. The girl was rubbing her nose, a pout on her lips, cheeks red and eyes puffy from crying. Her left eye was a little more swollen; a light shade of purple covering the skin around her eyebrow and Lucy’s heart ached for seeing her in such state.

They both looked up at her approaching and Denise stood from the couch. “I already called Jiya in. We’ll need her to figure out how, where and when exactly the machine came from.”

“There is no pilot,” Lucy said dumbly and silently congratulated her for stating the obvious. The big question was how this child had traveled through time without anyone guiding the machine. Would they be able to operate them without a pilot in the future? Had they found a way to make it travel on autopilot? Whoever sent the girl back had done it blindly in the hopes she’d arrive safely? Did they only need a pilot to bring the machine back?

“No, there isn’t.” The agent approached Lucy as she made her way to the door and put a hand on her shoulder, the gesture gentle and understanding. “This is a child,” she said in a half whisper so only Lucy would hear, “Don’t worry too much about what you can do. They don’t need much, just patience and comfort.”

The little girl stayed on the couch, looking uncertain but fidgeting as if she wanted to run right back into her arms and Lucy finally had the chance to look at her over subdued shock and panic; and it was like looking in a mirror. She could see, even under her distress, the blood and the mess of her hair, the clear traces of her face: dark hair that curled up slightly at the end. The high cheekbones, even if they were still filled with a pair of round, rosy baby cheeks. The almond shaped eyes that turned up at the corners and were adorned with long, black lashes, except for the color; hers were blue like a bright morning sky. The slim nose slightly turned up at the bottom. Only the lips stood out in the DNA pool, a pair of full lips in a perfect Cupid’s bow shape; those were definitely _not hers_.

For a moment panic started making its way back, rising from the hole she had shallowly dug it in, at the possibility of Noah being her father. She recalled his full lips turning up in a sexy smile when he tried to coax her into bed and then frown down at her attempt escape. She _could_ be his daughter.

_Oh God, please don’t let it be him_.

She hadn’t found the courage to break things off with him completely, the engagement ring still hidden in the bottom of her purse and now she wondered if pushing things off for the next day and the next and the next resulted in a future marriage. Three years from now she could be anywhere, with anyone. Would Charlie disappear if she ended the engagement and put an end to any chance of relationship with him? Would that prevent this child from any suffering she may have gone through so far? She decided to push the thoughts away for the moment and deal with one thing at a time.

Lucy sat on the couch, occupying the spot Agent Christopher had been on, and the girl immediately turned to her, reaching for her hand. She may not have birthed this child in her current time, or watched her grow but her body still wanted to drift towards her, a primitive need to protect and love filling her cells, as if her very being knew that this small body was hers, had been a part of her once in a not so distant future, as if the DNA they shared was stronger than any force nature could create.

Her heart cracked and before she could even realize what she was doing, she opened her arms and said, “Come here.” And the girl did, crawling on her lap like a baby and putting her arms around Lucy’s neck, resting her head on her chest and sniffling as if she was trying to hold back more tears.

“I threw up inside the ball machine. I’m sorry.”

Lucy would have laughed if the girl’s voice wasn’t so soft and apologetic. “It’s okay, nobody’s mad at you.” She ran a hand through the little girl’s hair, and her fingers got caught in the knots created by dried blood and very possibly dried vomit. She pushed her hair back instead, wanting to take a look at the wound above her eyebrow. She had expected a bullet hole; in her shock she wasn’t processing anything as a normal brain would so in her wild thoughts she expected the worst, even if it wasn’t possible. Instead the bullet had grazed her skin just enough to open a wound that certainly needed stitching.

Anger flooded her, replaced the blood in her veins and made her want to hunt down everyone responsible for this. It dazed her; she had never felt this way before, _ever._ Not with her dying mother or her disappearing sister. Not one. What was that?

Okay, first things first, Lucy thought, trying to push back these feelings. “You need to see a doctor.” The girl didn’t panic or argued at all so she took that as a good sign. She rose from the couch taking the little girl with her and she snuggled easily against her side as if she had been held a hundred times like this before. In the future she had. 

Lucy went to the medical area where Wyatt had been sent after he got shot and found a young, Asian doctor there. “Well, hello there,” she greeted them but her focus was on Charlie. “How are you feeling?”

The girl looked at Lucy, seeking for reassurance and permission for what she should do. “Go ahead.”

“My head hurts.”

Of course it did. Lucy wished they would just had sedated her and made the past couple of hours a blissful sleep for this child.

“We are going to fix that right up, okay?” Charlie nodded and the doctor gesture for them to enter the room and for her to sit on the gurney. She did all the necessary procedures, weighting and measuring the girl, cleaning the wound and bandaging it, taking blood and hair samples. She was surprisingly calm through all of it.

Once she was done she mentioned for Lucy to follow her outside and the little girl immediately tensed.

“Mommy…” Her voice was tight with a hint of tears coming forth.

“It’s okay. I’ll be right here.” They stepped outside but left the door open and stayed in the girl’s line of sight.

“The wound to her head needed stitches, but it’s been at least 10 hours since she got shot so the skin started healing itself.”

“So she’ll have a scar. But at least she’s alive.” Lucy concluded, feeling the words be true but bitter as they sounded. The scar would be a reminder that she’d carry for the rest of her life. Her eyes shifted to the child behaving better than most, swinging her legs and staring intently at them, ready to jump off the gurney if she had the slightest suspicion Lucy was leaving without her.

The doctor nodded. “She’s a little small for her age, but children grow fast, so it’s nothing to worry about for the time being, but….”

Lucy’s full attention was on the doctor now, hanging on to every word she said, afraid of what the next one would be. “But?”

“She’s very skinny and that wouldn’t have worried if she wasn’t underweight enough to make me pay attention. I’m going to guess this child hasn’t seen a full meal in a while.”

For the tenth time tonight Lucy just wanted to go back home, hide under the covers like a coward and pretend none of this ever happened. Pretend there wasn’t a child so desperately in need of a mother that made her hate Rittenhouse, Mason Industries and just about anyone that set her life on this course. This wasn’t how she was supposed to have a child.

The doctor gave her antibiotics and painkillers along with a prescription of the correct dose and time the medicine should be given. 

“Thanks. I’ll take care from here.”

Lucy was furious. She did not know who or what exactly she was furious at, but if she was the kind of person to channel her anger into punches and beatings she’d have done it. She wanted to hurt back whoever had hurt her daughter; she wanted to make them pay for all the pain they had caused, from erasing her sister from her life to sending back a daughter that had gone through what no child should.

Instead she picked the girl up and promised herself she’d fix this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to update this earlier but I figured everyone was too busy with Christmas weekend. 
> 
> Another relatively short chapter, but I promise Wyatt (and Rufus) will show up in the next one. To be fair there are some things I'm struggling with mostly because I'm trying to make them make sense within the context of the story and the show. And other things I just question myself but I have no clear answer because we haven't seen much of the characters to know how they'd act. Would agent Christopher try to get answers from the child any way she could or because she's a mother would she feel sympathetic and let the child in peace while they tried to piece things together little by little? How would Lucy react? She seems to be very protective of her family, so would a child that she didn't have yet fall into the 'family' category? She tried to protect the Rittenhouse boy, so I figure she'd protect this girl more than anything. 
> 
> I know this is just a fanfic and I'm probably overthinking it but those are some of the things that goes on in my mind.


	4. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm updating in the last day of the year YAY. I was going to wait until next week when everyone was back from their holidays but I figured why the hell not. So here it is! A new chapter and a longer one. 
> 
> Thanks for all the feedback, I love getting comments! Hope you all enjoy this one.
> 
> Happy New Year everyone!

The bathrooms were big, the kind of facilities sport players had at their disposal: large rooms with shower and toilette stalls covered from top to bottom in white, stainless tiles. She figured it made sense considering everyone worked odd hours and never knew when they’d be called in. For her it was a convenience right now.

She placed Charlie on the wide, large countertop and then just stared at her. And they stared at each other, big brown eyes that had seen their fair share of life against small blue ones that looked so innocent and yet so wise. Charlie’s blue eyes were a sharp contrast to her pale skin and dark hair, the kind of feature Lucy had wished she had since she was a child so they would match her mother’s. Once Amy disappeared she finally understood why she looked so different from them.

“Charlotte,” Lucy tested the word on her tongue, tested it to see her reaction, tested to see if the name made any sense to her at all. Should she just ask? Should she pretend nothing changed and that she was still the mother this girl had ever known? Should she just explain what time travelling was comprised of? Would that traumatize this little girl even more? Would she even understand?

“Mommy?” Charlie whispered the word out, so familiar to her tongue and so unfamiliar to Lucy’s ears.

“Yes?”

“You look angry.”

“I’m not….” Lucy started lying, then decided there were too many lies already enveloping them like a blanket that had been over their heads long enough to start suffocating. “I’m angry at the people who did this to you.”

Her honesty seemed to break some invisible tension that Lucy had failed to notice, too worried about everything else that was weighting her down.  Charlie reached out and circled her arms around Lucy’s waist and Lucy immediately leaned into the embrace, putting an arm around her small back and one hand cupped her head. They stayed like that for several minutes, sharing a silence that was heavy with things unsaid, a child that sought comfort in her mother’s embrace and a woman that was learning to give it.

“Can we go home? Please? I just want to go home. I don’t want to play hide and seek anymore.”

Lucy didn’t even know where her home was. “How about we take you out of these dirty clothes first?” She started removing Charlie’s little boots when she realized she had no other clothes to give her. There was a dock full of outfits out there, none of which would fit a six year old. She sighed and threw the dirty boots in the trashcan. She reached into her back pocket for her cell phone and dialed Wyatt’s number.

He picked up on the second ring. “Lucy, is everything ok?”

She couldn’t ignore the small flame that came alight and warmed her chest at the worry in his voice. It felt _nice_. “Kind of.” How could she even begin to explain to him the Twilight Zone episode she found herself in? “I need you to do something for me.”

“Are you hurt? Where are you?” The sleep was out of his voice and he sounded completely alert, ready to do whatever she asked him. How had they changed from tolerating each other for the sake of protecting history to protecting and trusting each other so fast? Was it triggered in the moment he defended her after she had lost her sister? 

“I’m not and I’m at Mason Industries.”

“What??” This time she could hear the muffled sound of him putting on his clothes and pictured him moving around his apartment in a hurry, picking up his shoes and jacket and putting on his shoulder gun holster. “Where’s Flynn? Why didn’t anyone call me?”

“It’s not Flynn. Look, I need you to come over and bring a change of clothes for a six year old girl.” She glanced at Charlie and wondered if he’d be able to pick clothes for a child at all. Up to this moment she had never pictured _herself_ picking clothes for a child any time soon. “And a hamburger.” Charlie’s eyes went wide with interest and she could almost hear the girl’s stomach growling while she nodded in agreement. “And fries. And milkshake.” Then she added as an afterthought, “and a towel.”

 “Lucy, what the hell is going on?”

 “I’ll tell you when you get here.” Then she disconnected the call before he could grill her with more questions instead of doing what she asked. “All right, let’s get you out of these. ”

 Her attention back to the girl she resumed undressing her. She was wearing a button up jeans shirt with so much dried blood that Lucy doubted it had all come from the wound on her head. Her dark blue skirt hid whatever blood had gotten on it but by the hard feel of the material she guessed there was a lot on it too.

 “Charlie, whose blood is this?” She threw it out there, to hell with caution because _she needed to know_. Was it from someone she knew? Was it from someone she had killed? Was she even the one who had sent her back?

 “You know who it is.” Her voice was small, afraid, breaking by the end of the sentence as if she was too confused and too afraid to talk about what happened.

 Lucy put her hands on the girl’s cheeks, wiping new on coming tears away and stroked the soft skin just below her eyes. “Do you think you can talk me through it?”

She gave a small almost imperceptible nod that Lucy wouldn’t have noticed if she didn’t have her hands on Charlie’s head.  “The bad guys found us again. Daddy was holding me because I couldn’t run as fast as you and they started shooting. We were supposed to run to the car, but I think they shot us.” She stopped, her face screwing up in thought, then breaking down in a frown and then a pout as if she was remembering something she didn’t want to remember and then the tears just started coming again, as if Lucy’s question had opened the dam that was holding them back. “I don’t want to talk about it. Please don’t make me.”

“It’s okay, shhh,” Lucy hugged the child, arms so tight around her small body she briefly wondered if she would break something; she felt like a ragdoll in her arms, small and fragile and shaking like a delicate plant under a thunderstorm. How could she ask the right questions if the answers would be this? Did she even want to know what happened? Was she willing to find out that the man she would have a child with in the future was possibly dead? Did she want to know who he was only to learn about his fate? If she was supposed to protect the past could she try to change the future?

Once again Lucy tried to ignore these questions; she had been plagued with too many of them since she started working for Mason Industries and even more so now that she learned the future was a tangible thing, right at her fingertips, dancing around like a little demon mocking her, showing her she had no power over her choices, that every word Flynn had said since their first meeting may as well have been real. Had she written that damned journal, after all?

Lucy pushed her daughter away enough to look at her and stroked her cheek gently, pushing her hair behind her ears. “Let’s think about something else, okay?” Because she needed to think about something else too, _anything else_. At her vigorous nod, she continued, “How about a shower? You kind of smell bad, you know.”

That elicited a giggle from the little girl that was interrupted by a big yawn and it made Lucy smile. She had given Charlie the painkiller the doctor prescribed and knew the medicine was starting to kick in. Lucy worked on removing the girl’s shirt and when she opened it she was glad to see there were no hidden marks or scars or any signs of purpling. Then she noticed the folded paper peeking out of her skirt.

“What’s this?” She asked as she gently pulled the paper out.

 “Oh, it’s for you, silly.” As if it was something Lucy should already know.

She unfolded the square piece that seemed to have been ripped out of a small notebook and froze at the sight of her own handwriting: _Trust your enemy_. Lucy didn’t know if she wanted to cry or laugh or just do both while she crawled into a corner and tried to make the world around her disappear. What did that mean? It was hard to know who her enemy was and who wasn’t these days. The only people she trusted beyond any doubt were Wyatt and Rufus. Anyone else fit easily in the _not trusted_ category. Her enemy could be virtually _anyone_.  

Taking a deep breath Lucy silently prayed for patience and the wisdom to make the right choices, because right now she was just trying to pick up the pieces as she went. She folded the paper again and put it in her back pocket, telling herself she’d flush it later after showing it to Wyatt and Rufus.

She finished removing Charlie’s clothes and walked her to one of the shower stalls, hoping Wyatt would bring everything she asked. This child needed to be cleaned up, fed and put to sleep for maybe a couple of years.

Her phone rang while she was trying to wash the girl’s hair with the tiny motel type soap she found there. She hadn’t been in the state of mind to ask for shampoo, soap and the entire toiletry necessities. She checked the caller id: it was Wyatt.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“In the bathroom. I’ll meet you outside.” She hung up and handed Charlie the soap. “Keep washing yourself. I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” She would have stepped out of the stall if Lucy hadn’t stopped her.

“I’ll be right outside. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.” At her small, hesitant nod, Lucy knelt down at her eye level, “If you get scared all you have to do is call me and I’ll come right back, okay?” That seemed to calm her down, so Lucy stood and stepped out of the bathroom.

Wyatt was already there, holding a couple of bags and a McDonald’s take out. He looked eager, curious and confused, but ready to be at service like a good soldier, a good friend. Did good friends kiss each other when the situation called for it? Were good friends supposed to feel a quick spread of fire and trembling of limbs and burning of skin at said kiss?

Lucy all but threw her body against the wall and closed her eyes, taking a deep, full breath. “I have a daughter.” At the silence that followed her statement, she opened her eyes and stared at Wyatt. He looked like someone waiting for the final punch. “From the future.”

That seemed to do it; his eyes widened, eyebrows going up and mouth hanging slightly open. Before, this confession wouldn’t make any sense; he’d probably have laughed it off but they knew enough to understand the impact of her words without any further explanation.

“She came from 2024,” she continued, then corrected herself: “She was _sent_ from 2024. She’s six and she’s been shot.”

“You mean you are serious?”

She gave him a look that said _do I look like I’m kidding_ and pushed herself from the wall to take the bags he had brought her. “Sorry to ruin your fate is what you make it belief. I guess this time I was meant to take a drink.”

 “Lucy, why was she sent back?”

Oh, the million dollar question. “I have no idea. She doesn’t want to talk about it. But I’m going to take a wild guess and say it’s because of whoever shot at her. And her father. I think he’s dead, Wyatt.”

He froze in the middle of handing her the bags and finally sobered up to the seriousness of the situation. “What makes you think that?”

“The way she talked. She started crying when I asked her about being shot. There was a lot of blood on her, Wyatt. _A lot_. If someone shot a child I doubt they’d spare an adult.” Lucy pulled the piece of paper from her back pocket and handed it to Wyatt. “She had this.”

Wyatt took unfolded the paper and took a moment to study it. “It’s your handwriting.”

“Yes. And If I wrote it, then how can I deny ever writing the journal Flynn has been carrying around all the time?” This time her voice faltered and she almost betrayed herself with tears. She wouldn’t cry in front of him, or at all if she could help it. She had already beaten herself up over this too much.

“Lucy,” Wyatt reached a hand out to touch hers, squeezing her fingers with such gentleness that made the hair on her arms stand up. She ignored the feeling. “It doesn’t matter if you wrote the journal in some future we know nothing about. What matters is what you do now. We don’t even know if the future is one linear line. There could be many futures, each to every choice we make.”

She didn’t like that idea. She liked to believe there was only one straight timeline that could change to each choice they made, like the present changed with each change in the past. The timeline where her mother was sick and her sister existed was gone unless something happened to change it back. Otherwise it meant that this child could just be one of many different choices. That seemed to diminish her existence somehow.

“There’s no timeline where my sister still exists, Wyatt. That’s why I have to change it. The same way you are trying to get Jessica back. The same way I have to change the future so my child won’t get shot and sent back.”

As if Wyatt realized he was still holding her hand he let it go and gave the piece of paper back to Lucy then proceeded to cross his arms, almost as if he was trying to keep his hands from reaching out again. “I guess we believe in what makes us feel better.”

Lucy stared at him, considering his words. It was easier for him to cling to the belief that nothing was set in stone and everything could change, easier to believe his wife’s death could be prevented somehow. He had tried so many times and failed every single one. Did it mean something? Was fate trying to tell him that some things were unchangeable? If that was true, did that mean she couldn’t change the future and stop her daughter from ever getting hurt?

His blue eyes stared back at her and something twisted in the pit of Lucy’s core, a recognition that she couldn’t place.  She just shook her head and filed it up for later, there were too many confusing and strange things happening to her today to worry about one more. And she was exhausted.

“I have to go. I left Charlie by herself in the shower for too long now.”

Wyatt held the door open for Lucy to go in. “Funny, my grandma was called Charlotte. I love that name.”

Lucy’s step almost faltered and the churning in her stomach suddenly threatened to swallow her whole. It couldn’t be, it just _couldn’t_. It had to be all just a coincidence. Blue eyes were common, Charlottes were common. The fact both had happened to her meant nothing. She didn’t know how long she’d be able to get out of the way of all the curve balls life was throwing at her, wondering how much her life was going to be screwed over with before she finally broke down completely.

She went back inside with her head buzzing and her legs shaking.


	5. Four

She was having a child with Wyatt Logan.

She was having a child with _Wyatt Logan_.

Lucy tried to stop herself from shaking as best as she could, but she still got a couple of ‘ _Are you ok, Mommy?_ ’ as she dressed and fed Charlie almost on autopilot and when she accidentally brushed against the wound on the child’s head, resulting in a painful _ouch Mommy_ from her Lucy forced all of her senses back into place and focused on her daughter while she apologized profusely.

Wyatt had brought a shirt that she suspected was his, it smelled faintly of soap and perfume that it triggered the part of her brain that connected smell to feelings. The shirt fell down to Charlie’s knees but it seemed to fit her well enough.  There were no shoes but she couldn’t complain; she was dressed in clean, comfortable clothes and that made this child look like a human being again and not someone that had been shot at and basically bathed in blood.

Charlie had gone through half the food in record time, even as Lucy tried to tell her to slow down and eat calmly. They had shared the French fries while Charlie babbled on about childhood silliness: about a book she had read in the future, characters from a cartoon Lucy knew nothing about, about a birthday cake with a lot of chocolate and all the colors in the rainbow because ‘ _you promised, mommy_ ,’ since they had apparently skipped the celebration in 2024: she had just turned six before she was shipped back to 2016. Lucy watched her talk, watched her mannerisms, watched how she bit her upper lip forming a cute little pout when she was thinking, watched her move her hands as she talked, how she spoke openly and freely and watched her fall sleep against Lucy’s chest when she was trying to untangle her tresses with gentle fingers in her hair.

She could be Wyatt’s daughter; she could see it in the way she smiled, because it was Wyatt’s smile. In the way she pronounced some of her words, in the way the corners of her lips dented into perfect half-moons, in the way Charlie looked at her, just looked at her with an expression she had only seen in Wyatt after they had kissed, something that linked them together in a way nobody else was.  

Lucy could just have asked Charlie’s full name. It’d be so easy and so simple to stop the storm raging inside her if she wasn’t so afraid of it turning into a tsunami. Instead she pretended she didn’t see Wyatt in everything Charlie did. Pretended falling in love with him was not a possibility. Pretended the kiss never happened. Pretended she didn’t wonder if he thought about it as often as she did, if it had changed something inside him as it had changed in her.

She stood from the bench they were on with Charlie in her arms, careful not to wake her up and left the bathroom. She couldn’t think about this anymore, her head was already pounding. On her way through the wardrobe dock she found Rufus and Jiya in deep conversation next to the 1960s rack and she had the feeling they were talking about her.

They stopped talking when they saw her approaching and they were twin images of curiosity. “Is that her?” asked Rufus, sounding unnervingly excited, receiving an elbow to the side from Jiya then mouthed _what?_ at her.

Lucy only nodded, afraid any sound would wake the little girl up; she wanted to let this child sleep.

“There’s a room just beyond the wardrobe dock where we have some cots.” Jiya motioned to the general direction of the room, her voice sensibly low. “We get called in in the middle of the night too often. You can let her sleep there.”

“Thanks, Jiya.” Lucy whispered, hoping her low voice showed all the gratitude she was feeling.

Lucy went to the room, an open space with a few cots in tidy rows with a direct way to the control panel and the launch pad, the grate walls giving easy view of everything. She gently placed Charlie in one of the cots closest to the exit and considered lying down for a nap herself. She had been called at nearly 3 am and it was already way past 5 am; she was tired, her head hurt and French fries hadn’t been enough to fill her growling stomach.

Charlie nestled against the cot, curling into herself that made her look even smaller than she already was. She looked in peace for the first time since Lucy had laid her eyes on her.

“She looks like you.”

It took Lucy out of her reverie and she looked up from Charlie to Jiya, who held a non-descript blanket in her hands and was in the process of covering the little girl. Something filled her chest and Lucy had the slight suspicion it was pride. “She does, doesn’t she?”

“Wonder if she inherited the personality too. Now that will be trouble.”

Lucy glared at Rufus, but her look didn’t hold malice, but before she could answer Wyatt’s voice drifted towards them.

“Flynn took the Mothership to 1734.”

Lucy’s blood froze. This was possibly the worst moment for Flynn to make their weekly pay’s worth. “Today of all days?” She was exasperated, frustrated, angry. How often would she have to wish she could disappear before it finally happened?

“I’ll take care of her,” Jiya said. “She’ll probably sleep for several hours. Maybe you’ll even be back before she wakes up.”

Lucy didn’t want to go, she wanted to pass this responsibility to someone else, someone more capable, someone wiser, someone that had nothing to lose.

Seeing her hesitate, Wyatt stepped closer to her and she noticed Jiya and Rufus sharing a silent look and giving them space. “She’s safe here.”

“You don’t know that. What if she wakes up and I’m not here?” Just the thought of this little girl waking up to find a room full of strangers again and no mother in sight made Lucy’s heart heavy. She didn’t want this child to go through any more stress.

Wyatt bent down and brushed some of Charlie’s hair out of her face and ran a soft finger down her chin. The little girl stirred, but didn’t wake up, instead she snuggled deeper into the blanket, almost as if she recognized the touch. Maybe she did. “She looks like you.”

Lucy’s eyes filled with unshed tears, and she bit her lip to stop herself from spilling out everything she wanted to say. Watching Wyatt with her, being so gentle, _so fatherly_ , made her want to just tell him already what she suspected. Would he believe her? Would he freak out as much as she was freaking out? Would he refuse to accept it? How long could she hide this from him? Was it even the truth? Of all the things her tongue itched to speak, she said instead: “I know.”

“She’ll be fine, Lucy.” Wyatt stood again and stepped back from the cot as if he was giving himself space, as if he recognized something when he touched the little girl he couldn’t quite understand. Could he feel down in his bones the connection to her? Did his body respond to her body like Lucy’s had? “Nobody here is going to hurt her. On the other hand, Flynn can change something in the past that could very well erase her when we are back. So we need to stop him.”

His words seemed to unlock the chains she had put around her and Charlie and she realized there was more at stake now. She nodded and followed Wyatt into the conference room for the briefing. It was the usual, information being thrown back and forth as they analyzed what Flynn could possibly want so early in American history and reached the conclusion of no idea.

As they were leaving, Agent Christopher called Lucy back. “Lucy, a word please.”  

She knew what Denise would ask and she had no answers to give. She _had_ tried.

“I know it’s a very sensible moment, but I need your report. I can’t hold Mr. Mason back for too long.”

Of course Connor Mason would have a personal interest in this. It didn’t matter if it was a child, his scientific mind would still want to dissect the situation. “She’s too scared. I tried asking about the blood and she started crying. This will be a very slow work. I’m sorry.”

“I know you’re doing the best you can, but the situation calls for desperate measures.” Agent Christopher looked around to make sure no one was looking on or listening in and stepped closer to Lucy, keeping her voice low. “If this is about Rittenhouse we need to know everything she knows ASAP.”

“She’s six. What could she even know?”

“Oh, Lucy, children catch on a lot more than we adults think.”

Lucy opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. What could she say? Agent Christopher had children of her own; she was a lot more capable of understanding a child than Lucy could ever begin to.

“For the time being go save the past. Charlie will be safe here.”

Everyone kept saying that and still Lucy felt as if there was someone in the shadows just waiting to launch at her, as if some invisible hand was touching gentle fingers around her wounds to see when she’d feel pain. The thing is: she felt pain all the time; she just tried to ignore it.

Lucy nodded and turned around to leave and the farther she got from the cot the little girl she was just getting to know was sleeping in, the tauter the string around her heart became.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little short, but I found that this was the best place to end it. Next chapter things finally heat up a little bit and Wyatt becomes a major player, it'll be longer and I'm updating very soon again. I’m hoping to introduce Flynn soon, but I’m having a little trouble figuring out what I should do. I didn’t want to use Benedict Arnold in this story, but then I had some ideas for it: Flynn kidnaps Lucy not only to try and convince her how bad Rittenhouse is, but revealing quite a few things from the future while he does it. Do you guys think it’d be a good idea or best to just leave canon for the episode when it airs? I'm afraid of not being able to get to it before January 16.


	6. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I finally figured out how many chapters this will have (12). So we’re almost halfway through. PHEW. It feels nice to have the whole timeline outlined instead of just reaching into my brain as I go. TBH I feel kind of sad already knowing how long this will be and knowing the end is more tangible now. Boo.
> 
> Anyway this chapter is a little longer than most, whoohoo. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for all the comments, kudos e bookmarks <3

Lucy was pissed.

No, not pissed: _infuriated_. The whole trip was a waste of time. They had trudged around 1734 New York City trying to figure out what Flynn could be trying to do only to come back empty handed. Again. She was tired, she was angry and she was worried sick about Charlie being left on her own for so many hours. Usually these wild goose chases didn’t bother her because it meant history was preserved and the present was unchanged, even if the trip always resulted in them being chased, shot at, imprisoned, threatened of death or all of them at once. But this time it took precious time from responsibilities she should be dealing with.  And if there was something Flynn wanted in the 18 th century they had no idea what it was.

She felt the pressure of time building around them, the fabric of it breaking and rearranging itself as if time had jolted them from their bodies and then allowed them to bounce back again. This was always the worst part no matter how many times they travelled; her body falling back in synchrony with her timeline left her dizzy and disoriented for a second, as if her mind was processing which timeline she was supposed to be from.

Lucy took a deep breath to give herself a minute and looked at Wyatt as he did the same.  He gave her a reassuring smile, but looked away quickly. He had been doing that a lot lately, not holding her gaze, stepping away when she stepped closer, not texting her back as often as he used to. Something had changed between them after their time in Bonnie and Clyde’s cabin, a tension simmering just under the surface that seemed to be ready to explode at the slightest provocation.

Wyatt unbuckled himself and exited the Lifeboat first but turned to help Lucy out of the machine as she struggled to even pass through the door; her dress had gotten stuck. Wyatt put his hands on her waist and tried to pull her to him while she squirmed through the hatch door. It took all of two seconds for the whole ordeal to be over but it had been enough to make her flustered with the proximity of Wyatt’s body to hers and his hands on her waist. It wasn’t something she could control; her heart skipped a beat on its own accord. Then he removed his hands so fast she was frustrated again.

“Thanks.” She looked quickly away, hoping her face wasn’t as red as she felt. She wouldn’t have bothered to try and hide her reaction to him if she knew how absolutely mortified she’d feel in the next moment.

“Daddy!” The scream that came from the bank of computers silenced everything in the warehouse. Every conversation died as if a switch had been flipped and Lucy could only hear the machines beeping and the controlled breathes of those who weren’t able to simply hold it. The silence allowed Lucy to hear her own heartbeat as if it had taken control of her entire body and found solace in her head; her ears buzzed, her breath was shallow and her limbs trembled like leaves in the wind.

Time had stopped around her as she watched Charlie come running down the control panel and through the platform towards them in slow motion, like the fabric of time coming apart and then back together when they were inside the machine.

The little girl threw herself at Wyatt, who stood unmoving with eyes so wide that made her briefly wonder if they could pop out, his face ghostly white as if all of his blood had been drained from his body and Lucy wondered if that was how she had looked when it had happened to her. Charlie had locked her arms around his waist, holding him so tight her tiny knuckles were going white.

Then she let go and looked up, eyes bright and red with tears, her small hands touching Wyatt everywhere as if she was reassuring herself he was really there. “I saw you! I saw you on the ground! There was blood all over you!”

Wyatt looked at Lucy and the terrified look he gave her made her lungs squeeze shut. She was thrown back into the car, skidding off the road and into the river, the water filling in faster than she could unbuckle herself and leave. She was freezing, watching the water rise at the same rate as her panic, her screams building inside her lungs, her legs kicking flimsily at the window against the density of the water.  She remembered a distinctive smell that day, motor oil, cool water, burned tires, the smell of her fear and the terrifying silence broken by her screams.

That was how she felt now, in that horrifying silent moment that pierced her ear between the loud noise of her car hitting the water and her feet breaking the window, just listening to the water rush in from places she couldn’t see.

Wyatt stepped away from the child and walked past her, through the platform echoing loudly in the room, by silent eyes following him. And just like that air was back in her lungs and her mind back to the present, away from the cold water covering her like a coffin six feet deep.

“Wyatt!”

Of course he didn’t turn back, disappearing into the wardrobe dock, so she ran after him. She had no idea what she’d say, but something had to be done. She vaguely noticed leaving a completely dumbstruck Charlie behind.

“Wyatt, wait!”

He turned out briskly, racks of clothes from different decades the only witnesses to the exchange of fury and hurt and confusion between two people who were probably just as lost as the child who had just been left behind. “Thanks for the warning.” He said dryly, angrily.

“I didn’t know.” He narrowed his eyes at her, a glare so intense it hurt. “I swear I didn’t.”

“You spent hours with her and you couldn’t be bothered to find out?”

“I… I suspected.” Lucy twisted her hands in an attempt to ease the tension flooding her body. Her dress was hot, her breath heavy and her body screamed for rest. “When you said your grandmother was called Charlotte, I suspected.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” His voice was a mix of frustration, desperation and anger – anger that flowed freely from every word he spoke.

“What was I supposed to say? ‘Oh by the way, we have a child together’? Give me a break, Wyatt. I’ve been thrown into this just like you.”

“You could have said anything, you had the time to, but you chose to hide this from me.”

Lucy’s patience was running thin. She hadn’t slept in almost 24 hours, she was starving, exhausted and frankly in no mood to deal with anyone’s bullshit while her own life was a confusing mess. “Screw you, Wyatt.”

He scoffed and rubbed his hands over his face, fingers grabbing into his hair until it was sticking up every way. “It’s so easy for you to accept this, isn’t it?” His voice was so low, and half broken, but held so much bitterness she took a step back from his accusation.

What did he think she was doing? That was glad to play house with a child she didn’t even consider having, much less with him? That she hadn’t been dragged into a rabbit’s hole kicking and screaming? That he’d think this was _easy_ for her was outrageous by itself. “I’d choose my words very carefully if I were you.”

Her words seemed to hit, he changed his posture, hands hanging limp beside his body, anger and frustration giving away to an expression of total resignation and sadness.  “I can’t have a child. I don’t _want_ a child. I can’t deal with this right now.”

Her vision went red and if she wasn’t a reasonable person she’d probably have released her anger on his nose. “Well tough luck, Wyatt. She’s here, so deal with it.” Then Lucy’s eyes caught movement in the back, just a little beyond Wyatt, and looked to see Charlie half hidden behind a hack. From the look on her face she had heard everything. “Damnit.”

At the tense tone of her voice Wyatt look back in time to see Charlie turning to run away. Lucy walked past him to go after her and he tried following, but at his first step Lucy put a hand up.

“Don’t. You’ve done enough damage.” She was furious, her voice a low timbre through gritted teeth so she wouldn’t yell at him.

Charlie ran as if she knew the place, taking the right turns to find the large door to the outside world. Lucy watched her push it open with a little difficulty and that was all of the few seconds she needed to catch up to her. She caught the little girl just as she stepped outside, bare feet crunching the hard edged gravel on the ground before Lucy held her arm and pulled Charlie to her.

“Let me go! Let me go!” She struggled like a wild animal; pulling her arm back with such ferocity that Lucy had to hold on tighter and worried that it would leave a mark. “I don’t want to stay here! I want to go home, I want to go back! Just let me go home!”

Lucy dropped down to the ground, her skirts at least serving to keep the gravel from digging into her knees, and hugged Charlie to her. She struggled and struggled, crying until hiccups broke through the tears and the pleading to _just go back home_. This time Lucy wasn’t able to hold back her own tears as an avalanche of feelings buried her down and silently let them slip over the rim of her eyes; keeping Charlie so tight against her that eventually she stopped struggling and slumped against Lucy’s chest, crying the tears that were still left as Lucy tried to comfort her with meaningless _shh_ and _it’s ok_ and a gentle rubbing to her back.

Eventually she stopped crying and they just stayed there, sitting on the graveled dirty ground, a woman who knew nothing about maternity in a 18th century dress and a little girl dressed in a too large shirt who grieved for the life she had before being thrown in the world of adults and all Lucy wanted to do was to put her inside a bubble and keep her there forever, away from pain and away from loss.

Lucy wanted her mother. The realization hit like she had been sucker punched and all her breath had been taken away. She needed her mother’s knowledge, wanted her mother’s comfort, and most of all wanted to simply hand over all of her problems and let her mom figure out how to fix it all because Lucy had _no idea_ what she was doing.

“Why did he say he didn’t want me?” The voice came muffled, between a sniffle and a deep intake of breath.

Lucy didn’t need to know who she was talking about. She pushed Charlie back enough to look at her, held her head in between her hands and made the girl look straight at her, straight into her eyes. “He didn’t mean it.” She hoped her voice had come out strong and firm enough to get the message through, even though she felt anything but strong and firm inside.

She didn’t know if Charlie had really believed her, but the girl gave a weak nod and hugged her again, so Lucy hugged her back, kissing the top of her head and letting her lips rest there for a moment more. It felt like that’s what she was supposed to do, it felt right.

“Did you hurt your feet?” Lucy asked after she had given Charlie time to calm down and checked them out even after the girl had shaken her head no. At least _something_ was okay. “Help me up?” Charlie got up from Lucy’s lap and wiped her eyes one last time before extending her tiny hand towards Lucy.

When they were back inside Lucy was greeted by the usual hum of voices and machines and she was thankful for it. The world seemed to have gone back to normal even if her life was upside down and that bit of normalcy felt good.

“Do you want me to go get aunt Jiya to help you undress?” Charlie asked her so off handedly that Lucy wondered if this was something that always happened in the future.

She looked down at Charlie and found her blue eyes staring at her. She wanted to ask if she knew Jiya, if in the future the techie was a part of their lives, if she was still alive when Charlie was sent back. “Think you can help me?” At her excited nod Lucy took her to the changing stall and let the little girl help with the two dozen layers of skirts, corset, laces and knots all over her outfit.

It took them a while to get it all out and by the time Lucy was back in her own clothes and opening the curtain to leave something clicked inside her. She had nowhere to take Charlie. She couldn’t take her home with her mother there without being forced to explain to her everything, something she was legally forbidden to do.

“Shit.”

Charlie gasped loudly, putting her hands over her mouth and looked at Lucy with big, round eyes, so wide and shocked that almost made Lucy laugh. “Mommy!”  

“Sorry, bad word.” She coughed to hide her laugh and then added as an afterthought: “Don’t repeat it.”

Lucy had two options: finding Wyatt and telling him to act like a father despite the fact that, right now, he wasn’t one, or checking into a hotel until she figured out what to do. She was considering her options when the person of her thoughts stepped into the wardrobe dock and walked in her direction.

“Hey.” He looked briefly at her, than at Charlie, he couldn’t hold their gaze. He looked tired, as if the few minutes that passed since they had fought had aged him a decade. Lucy hadn’t considered that this could be much harder on him because of Jessica. Her death still hovered over him like a ghost that wouldn’t let go and the guilt consumed him daily. Having a child with anyone else other than Jessica probably felt like an impossibility, something he couldn’t even start to process.  “I’m sorry.”

“Wyatt-”

“No, let me finish.” He held a hand up, asking her silently for the moment. He took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts. “When you left, I saw my father. In me, I mean. He’d say things he should regret and he never did. He’d treat me like crap and then act as if what he did was all right. I don’t want to be my father.”

All the anger she had felt for him quickly dissipated at is words, giving away to something else entirely, something that squeezed her lungs shut and made it hard to breath. She wanted to reach out, reach inside his heart and take away everything that made him hurt, to comfort him the way he had done to her so many times before. Instead she reached for his hand and squeezed it tight and hoped it’d be enough. “Wyatt, you’re _nothing_ like your father. Don’t ever think that.”

“Maybe not yet, but I don’t want to give that man a chance to surface.” He looked down at Charlie hiding behind Lucy’s leg as she desperately hang on to her hand and knelt down to be at her eye level. “That machine makes you really sick.”

“I know.” Charlie whispered, stepping a little away from Lucy so she was in full view, all messy hair and large shirt and dirty feet and red face, but still a beautiful, wide eyed child.

“I didn’t mean it.” Lucy knew he did, up to this moment he wasn’t a father, he didn’t want a child, and until he knew her, he felt like she was part of him, he meant it. Because she had meant it too.

But children were innocent and pure, they didn’t make things complicated when they shouldn’t be, so Charlie simply let go of Lucy’s hand and threw herself into Wyatt’s arms, holding tight to his neck, her face resting on his shoulder. She watched as Wyatt gently put his arms around Charlie, unsure of what to do, but letting the girl take comfort in his embrace.

Then something else happened: his shoulders relaxed, his posture went from rigid and tense to completely at ease and Lucy wondered if that was it, his body recognizing a piece that was missing and putting it back into place.


	7. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit slow, nothing -much- happens, but it's something that needed to get out of the way. I'm hoping to introduce Flynn in the next chapter. We'll see how it goes. I know there hasn't been much development on the future aspect, but thing will slowly fall into place. Lucy and Wyatt are learning what happened at the same speed Charlie reveals things.
> 
> I won't be able to update next week as I'll be out of town on vacation and probably won't be able to write at all, so I hope this hold you guys over until next time. Plus, new episode Monday!!! Yeeep!!
> 
> (Also, easter egg in there, hope you guys like it!)

She had never been to Wyatt’s place before, but had picture it clean and utilitarian like any single male who lived alone. Instead, she entered into a place packed with memories; boxes piled up on a corner, books on another, stacks of files and other random memorabilia that probably were part of a home once. It had been four years since Jessica died and Wyatt was still holding on, still seeking justice, still trying to find closure.

Lucy couldn’t imagine what was like loving someone so much you couldn’t let go. _Or being loved that much._ She felt a little pang in her chest, as if her heart was being pushed down by the weight of pain and earning.

Lucy had told Wyatt she couldn’t take Charlie home, not with her mom there, and he had immediately offered his place, claiming he had an extra room Charlie could take. It had left her relieved to have at least this one problem resolved, one less headache to deal with.  They had stopped on the way to buy Charlie some clothes, just the basic until they figured out what they were supposed to do. And buying clothes for a child that had absolutely nothing had proved to be a very difficult effort. Lucy didn’t want to admit to herself, but it had been fun picking clothes for a daughter, despite the circumstances. 

Charlie had forgiven Wyatt pretty quickly and had hung on to him ever since they left Mason Industries, her small hand always holding him, or closing a fist around his shirt when his hands were busy. Wyatt had looked awkward for a while, as if he didn’t really know what to do but eventually the weight of her body against his side had started to feel like a fit and his awkward stance had slowly blended into that of a father carrying his child. And it looked a pretty picture. Lucy had caught herself staring at them a few times, wondering what had happened – what would happen – in the next couple of years to bring them close enough to have a child together, wondered what kind of father he had been to Charlie in the few years following her birth. Had he accepted her pregnancy easily? _Had she_?

Wyatt put Charlie on the ground and she immediately went exploring the apartment despite it being small, but when she opened a door Wyatt took a few quick steps and closed the door again, pointing towards the room right next door. “That’s your room.”

Lucy followed her there and dropped the bags of newly bought clothes on the bed. The room was very utilitarian of course, mostly used for old boxes, but it had a bed, which at the moment was more than enough. Lucy looked at it with longing and her bones ached to feel the weight of a mattress under her. She was _so tired_. Instead of lying down, she took the pair of red pajamas she bought from one of the bags, a Barbie underwear from another and turned to Wyatt, “Shower?”

He pointed to the door on the other side of room. “Bathroom’s over there.”

It had a bath and Lucy almost told Charlie to back and help Wyatt with whatever he was doing while she slept in the hot water for a few hours.  Once the bathtub was filled and the water was warm enough, she undressed Charlie and helped the girl get in.

“We need bubbles, Mommy.”

“I don’t think Wyatt has any, sorry.”

“What I am supposed to play with?” She asked in such a serious manner that once again Lucy felt like laughing. In the midst of so many problems and worries, she was glad the only thing in Charlie’s had right now was playing.

“Pretend you are at the pool.” Lucy cupped her hand and filled it with water, dropping it over Charlie’s head and the girl giggled. “Drop back to get your hair wet.” And she did, pinching her nose with her tiny fingers and taking a deep intake of breath so exaggerated Lucy smiled, and went underwater.

Lucy grabbed the soap and the shampoo from the shelf and put it on the bathtub. She washed Charlie’s head properly this time, real shampoo and not some small motel room soap that had no particular scene. This one was rich, fresh with undertones of coconut and ocean breeze, and the scent reminded her of Wyatt, all the smells in the bathroom reminded her of Wyatt.  

“Charlie,” Lucy suddenly remembered she hadn’t asked the most basic, easiest question she could ask her daughter for fear of the truth, but now she needed to know. “Can you tell me your full name?”

“Charlotte Alexandra Logan, born on November 28, 2018, daughter of Lucy Caroline Preston and Wyatt Richard Logan.” She answered in a monotone voice, as if she had been trained to say these words, like a soldier in an interrogation. “Did I do good, mommy? I remembered everything.”

“Yes, you did good.” Lucy’s voice falter and she couldn’t breathe. She needed to clear her head.  “I’ll be right back.” This time Charlie didn’t protest, simply nodded half interested while she made bubbles with her own hands splashing the water.

Lucy stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her; she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Somewhere in the future she was going to have a daughter with Wyatt, somewhere in the near future she was going to be _having sex_ with Wyatt - they’d be together, as a family. Lucy and Wyatt, it was so surreal that she was having a hard time grasping this reality.

“You okay?”

Wyatt’s voice startled her out of her thoughts and she realized her eyes were stinging with tears that wanted to break free. She shook her head, afraid that if she said anything her voice would fail her.

“Lucy, what happened?” He was worried, voice tense as if he was waiting for another bomb to drop. Wyatt stepped closer and grabbed her arms gently and Lucy started to feel grounded, as if his touch pulled her strength back and helped her stay on her feet. She wanted to lean into him.

“Charlotte Alexandra Logan. That’s her name.” Lucy looked up at him, and his eyes were soft, his hands were firm and she probably looked like a mess, but _oh god_ , she just needed comfort. “Alexandra is my sister’s middle name.” And somehow, to Lucy it meant that she was never getting her sister back.

They stood there staring at each other, Wyatt’s hands on her arms, his thumbs making small circles on her skin, his warmth enveloping Lucy like a cocoon until she felt dozy, until she felt like she could curl up into his arms and find out if she fit there. As if he had heard her thoughts Wyatt let go of her arms and took a step back.

“I guess we named her-” Wyatt cut himself, his face screwing up in confusion, “Will name her after people we love.” He said it quietly; as if this was something he didn’t want to admit out lout, as if the words leaving his lips would solidify whatever was happening between them.

“I guess we did.”

They stared at each other again, something passing between them, something electrifying that couldn’t be named, that raised the hair on her arms, that made her breath a little harder. She could kiss him, she could step a little closer and lean into him. Would he turn away if she did?

“I ordered pizza.” And even though is voice was a little deep, a little hoarse, the moment was broken, because Wyatt had been doing that a lot lately, always ending what hadn’t even had the chance to start. “Everyone likes pizza, right?”

Lucy smiled and nodded. “I’m sure she’ll be fine,” she answered, understand his worry. “Speaking of which, I should go back inside.”

“Sure.” Wyatt relaxed his posture, taking another step back from her. “Yell if you need anything.”

“Thanks.”

Charlie seemed to be okay, playing around in the bathtub with…. Bubbles. She smiled at Lucy, a bright, tired smile that dented the corner of her mouth into soft half-moons. “I squeezed shampoo in the water and look! Bubbles!” She looked so pleased with herself that Lucy didn’t have the heart to say anything; instead she picked up the shampoo bottle to confirm that, in fact, half of the content was gone.

“Aren’t you a little troublemaker? Let’s get out of there, come on.” Lucy said and held open one of the towels she found in the cabinet next to sink.

“Sure thing, ma’am!”

That sent a zing right through Lucy’s heart that quite possibly made it stop at that very moment. “What?” Her voice faltered at the familiarity of the words, the way her _ma’am_ was so strong and with a hint of mock accent.

“You always laugh when Daddy says that!” Charlie sounded a little defensive even though she was giggling and Lucy thought she probably looked a bit stunned.

Lucy wanted to say that maybe it was because _Daddy_ saying that probably meant something completely different, but figured it wouldn’t be a very appropriate conversation. Wyatt’s words were full of flirty intentions and Lucy was past the time for denying that. He flirted with her _a lot_ even if he didn’t notice it. And she liked it. She liked the way he’d stare a little too long, the way his lips would turn up into a half smirk, only the left corners reaching up into his cheek, liked the way he said _ma’am_ even though she told him to stop it and she was _so glad_ he hadn’t.

So she didn’t say anything, just wrapped Charlie inside the towel, helped her out of the bathtub and dried her off. Lucy checked out her work once Charlie was dressed in red pajamas with white dots and combed hair; she looked like a child who had always been cared for, always loved and it as a nice sight. Next up were painkillers and carefully applying a Band-Aid to her wound. Charlie seemed to have completely forgotten she had been shot not too long ago.

When they left the bathroom the pizza had already been delivered and Charlie seemed to smell it as she went running towards the small kitchen, hopping on a chair and opening the box. “I love pepperoni!! Thanks, Daddy!”

They had eaten in an awkward silence broken only by Charlie’s babbling. Sitting all three of them on a table pretending to be the family they were not made a hole start to grow inside Lucy’s chest and she couldn’t quite understand what she felt. She had washed the dishes afterwards as a way to get herself busy, to keep herself away from Wyatt, to stop herself from glancing at him constantly, wishing she could find out what he was thinking.

Charlie had found her favorite place on the couch, flipping the channels until she found one that was showing a cartoon she had probably never watched and Wyatt had disappeared inside the bedroom Charlie was going to use, and she guessed he was cleaning the room a bit, putting things way, pulling out a clean sheets.  

By the time they were done and back in the living room it was past midnight and Charlie was half asleep on the couch so Lucy declared it was time for bed. Wyatt just stood there, glancing from Charlie to Lucy with the expression of someone that had no idea what to do next, so Lucy took the lead and picked Charlie up.

“Goodnight, Daddy.” The little girl said as they walked past him and Wyatt chocked out a tight _goodnight_.

The bed was clear of the bags they had brought, and by the soft scene of soap in the room, clean sheets and blanket, and she gently laid Charlie down. The little girl grabbed Lucy’s hand to keep her from moving away and looked at her through half lidded eyes, heavy with sleep. “Don’t go, Mommy. Tell me a story.”

“Uh. Okay.” Lucy was uncertain of what she should do, what story to tell, wondered what kind of routine Charlie was used to. So she did he most obvious thing: took off her shoes and slipped under the covers with Charlie, who quickly moved to curl against Lucy’s side, one tiny hand closing around Lucy’s locket as if she was holding on to a piece of something that’d ground her. Lucy did that a lot when she went to sleep, rubbed a thumb over the soft face of the locket, wishing her sister back.

It was easy to fall into motherhood when Charlie took the lead, when she had memories of a life being comforted and loved and reflected that same love back – because Lucy felt absolutely _loved_ by this child and that kind of feeling couldn’t be described, to be trusted so completely by someone so vulnerable.

Charlie fell asleep quickly, even before Lucy had the time to think what story to tell her, so she just lay there for a while, letting the scent of Wyatt’s soap and baby smell mix and drift towards her nose, running her fingers through soft dark hair, letting the weight of this child against her become so familiar she could decipher it with her eyes closed. When she was sure Charlie wouldn’t wake up, Lucy gently pulled her locket from Charlie’s hand and slipped away from the bed.

Wyatt was on the couch, an open beer on the coffee table, hair up in every direction and shirt sleeves folded halfway up his arms. He looked worried – _troubled_ \- someone who was still trying to grasp what life had thrown at him but being unable to get a good grip. They just stared at each other, lost at words and Lucy wondered how they had reached this point: words failing them when they had always been great at communicating.

“I have to go.” His face went from troubled to terrified of being left alone with a child he didn’t know, but Lucy was exhausted and in no mood to deal with this. She needed time to think, time for herself. “I left my mom with a note. She’ll probably be furious. I need to go home, shower, change. _Sleep_.”

“You can sleep here.”

“Wyatt…” Lucy thought of her words, the best way to talk to him, to make him understand this shouldn’t be so hard. She grabbed her jacket and purse and walked to the door, Wyatt following her. “Just let her come to you. She’s six, she doesn’t need much,” she almost echoed Denise Christopher’s words and realized she had been right. It wasn’t hard, not being there for her anyway, because everything else was pulling her down.

Wyatt held the door open for her, but didn’t step away. Lucy realized he was doing it on purpose, giving her little space to move past him so she’d brush against him. What was he doing? “I’m afraid I’m going to screw this up.”

On the other side of the door, two steps away from him, hand grasping the strap of her purse so tight her knuckles were white, she said, “There’s something you don’t see about yourself, Wyatt. You’re a wonderful person. You’re kind and caring and you make sure the people you care about are okay. You could never screw his up.” She turned around to leave, then looked back at him: “It’s get easier, I promise.”

His eyes were fixed on her, something in them that grew into flames, that made his pupils go a little wider . Then she left before any words could leave his lips, because she couldn’t stand the look on his face, the look of someone who wanted something so badly but couldn’t allow himself to have it.  


	8. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LOOK AT ME. Ya'll thought all you were going to have tonight was a new episode, right? I actually didn't mean to update this early but I managed to write this in one afternoon. I thought it'd be hard to write from Wyatt's POV but I found it so easy. And YES it's from Watt's POV! So take this a little pre-episode party gift! I'm SOO happy the show is back :D 
> 
> I apologize for any mistakes, I wrote this late at night and tried to review it a few times, but some things always escape a tired eye. I hope you enjoy this and please keep the comments coming! I LOVE hearing your thoughts :D
> 
> BTW I have to admit I'm kind of in love with Charlie a little bit.

It had been impossible to sleep that night no matter how hard he tried, despite the two bottles of beer, despite of a good dose of whiskey, despite the absolute exhaustion he felt. His thoughts were a like a tempest, far on the horizon, threatening to destroy everything on its way, but never arriving.

He felt numb, stuck in the in between of being fully awake and being fully asleep, the blood running through his veins like pinpricks on a limb that was finally coming back alive. The hole Jessica’s death had left inside of him was being filled more quickly than he could dig it back up and the war raging inside him was leaving him tired.  It was a bitter resistance he was terrified of losing.

The child in the next room was real and yet he felt locked in a dream, with images swirling in front of his eyes, ethereal and untouchable no matter how far he tried to reach. She looked like them, it was unequivocal she was made from the same DNA that constructed his very cells, but how could it be possible? The future should be a fabric they unraveled with every moment living in the present, it shouldn’t be a tapestry already weaved hung on the walls of time.

What could he possibly have done in this future already set that would give him a child with a woman that was not Jessica? What kind of future had he built that allowed him to move past his grief and guilt and start living again? Lucy had been the only person to make something spark inside of him after four years of a grim driven existence.

The possibilities were overwhelming and not even alcohol had helped dim the bright lightening they created.

A sudden scream pierced through the glass of his thoughts and Wyatt jumped out of bed, gun in hand, Delta Force soldier in complete alert. It came from Charlie’s room and the hairs on the back of his head rose in fear.  She was screaming _Daddy! Daddy!_ And Wyatt had reacted almost on autopilot, his instincts reacting to her like a calling, urging him to _just go_.

When he opened the door to his room she was running out of hers but came to a halt, frozen in her tracks, her eyes widening as she stared at the gun in his hand and started screaming again, this time no calls for Daddy, but a pure, terrified scream that sent her to the floor. Charlie fell back on her elbows on her attempt to backtrack and Wyatt raised his arms, palms open, gun hanging from his right hand.

“It’s okay. It’s me. It’s okay.” He lowered the hand holding his gun slowly and put it gently on the coffee table, barrel turned to the other side. “See? No gun. It’s okay.”

Her crying had been broken by deep hiccups that became stronger when the tears slowed down. Wyatt flicked the lights on and the whole room was bathed in yellow, his face illuminated fully, arms up, labored breath and fear so deep it filled his chest until it almost burst open. He knelt down to be at her eye level and Charlie finally seemed to recognize him, standing from where she had fallen and throwing herself into his arms.

Then started crying again.

She was shaking so badly Wyatt felt his chest tremble with each deep intake of her breath so he tightened his arms around her, trying to calm her down as best as he could. “It’s okay, honey. Shhh. It’s okay.” It sent him back to Nazi Germany, to seeing Lucy putting up a strong face while she could hardly control her shivering. He had wanted to hold her then, pull her against him until she was as confident as he was she could pull that job through. Instead he had fixed her tie and tried _so hard_ not to touch her.

Charlie held him tight, her arms in a lock around his neck that almost choked him, but he didn’t mind. His body had awakened to something strange, something primal that filled him with rage for whatever had made her end up shivering in his arms with tears running down her cheeks in desperate speed.

“I saw you. I saw you. I saw you.” She repeated over and over, her voice weak and her teeth shattering in rhythm to her shivering. She felt cold and clammy to the touch so Wyatt brought a hand to her neck to make sure she didn’t have a fever.

“What did you see?”

She pulled back from him, her tiny hands grabbing his shirt over his shoulders, tightening a fist around the material until her knuckles turned white. It was then he noticed the blood running down her face, over the Band-Aid Lucy had put on her forehead. She probably had hit something on her way out of the bed. His eyes clouded over with a red haze and his rage turned into full hatred. “I saw you dead! I saw them shoot at you! I remember it!” 

She sounded desperate, frustrated with him, as if this was something he should already know, that he shouldn’t be asking her. Wyatt picked her up and she felt weightless into his arms, a cold, shivering bundle that curled against him and wouldn’t stop crying.

He went to the kitchen and filled a glass with water, handing it to her. “Drink it slowly.”

She did as she was told and the moments she spent gulping all the water seemed to be enough to calm her down even if only slightly. Her crying had diminished to silent tears and occasional hiccups.

He took her to the bathroom and put her seated on the counter. “Do you want to tell me what you dreamed?”

“It wasn’t a dream!” So frustrated that she pulled her eyebrows up, giving him a level look, just like Lucy always did when she thought he was being difficult to get through. He’d have smiled under different circumstances.

“Okay, then. Tell me what you remembered. You think you can do that?” He asked calmly with a soft voice so she’d feel comfortable enough to talk. He grabbed the emergency kit on the cabinet and inspected her wound while she talked. “There were two of them.” Wyatt nodded her on, cleaning the blood with a wet cotton pad. “They were wearing tie and a jacket.”

“A suit?” Didn’t seem like the wound had suffered much damage, she probably just scraped it somewhere, tearing a little of the skin that was already starting to heal over. Head wounds bled a lot and most times looked worse than they actually were.

She nodded. “Yeah, but like the funny ones you wear when you get in the ball machine.”

Wyatt smiled, this time he couldn’t help it. Did she mean old suits from past decades? “Funny how? You mean old?” His interested was definitely peaked. He finished fixing the bandage on her head and stared at her, watching her every reaction.

“I guess. I don’t know. They’re just funny. I never saw anyone wear them.”

The only suits he wore to the Lifeboat were old costumes to travel back in time. Did she mean the people that shot them came from the past? “What else do you remember?”

She had stopped shivering and her skin felt warm again and all Wyatt wanted was to hold her to him and somehow remove all of her bad memories so all she could remember was anything that didn’t involve guns. This sentiment was strange, but for some reason it felt _natural_ , as if it had always been there, just waiting to be awakened.  

“I heard you and Mommy talking,” she started, then as if she remembered something she had been chastised about often, she quickly added, “I wasn’t eavesdropping, I swear.”

“It’s okay. I’m not mad. Just tell me everything you can.”

“You talked about a house. Then after… Mommy said they were from it. But I don’t know what she meant.”

Wyatt’s blood went cold. “You mean Rittenhouse?” She nodded and Wyatt’s sight started to spin.

Rittenhouse was after them in present-future time? What the hell had happened to make them be hunted down like animals, to shoot a child, _to kill him_? Was that why Charlie had been sent back? So they could use it as leverage? To be one step ahead? What had happened to Lucy? He wanted to ask, but he was deadly afraid of the answer. It made him worried, made him _scared_.

Wyatt grabbed her shoulders gently, applying pressure only enough to make her give him her full attention. “I need you to promise me something. I need you to forget about Rittenhouse, don’t ever mention that name again to _anyone_. You hear me?”

“But they shot you! I saw you dead! I hate them!”

“Charlie,” Wyatt shook her a little and immediately regretted it when her eyes filled with tears again. “Am I dead right now?”

“No.” She whispered the word through pouted lips.

“Then forget about them. Promise me.” He needed it; he needed her promise, the certainty that their name would never be spoken aloud near someone that shouldn’t hear it, for her own safety. The least she knew, the safer she would be.

“I promise.”

Wyatt hugged her, pulled her small frame into him and held her tight. His soldier instincts to protect and serve were blending in with something else that came from deep within his bones and the fleeting thought that this was probably what fatherhood felt like passed through his mind.

Lucy had said it was easy, but she had forgotten to mention how primordial it felt, as if nothing else mattered in the world besides keeping this child safe.


	9. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got this done sooner than I expected (I wanted to update until Monday before the episode) so now I'm hoping to update again Tuesday. We'll see. 
> 
> I'm not satisfied with this chapter at all, but I spent the week worrying about this show and I honestly want to get this part done with and get a move on with the story (will happen next chapter, finally!). So I apologize for any mistakes. I try to review my writing, but it comes to a point where our eyes just totally gloss over. 
> 
> Ok, on to the next important thing: I think by now everyone knows our cute little show is in the "bubble" category, being threatened of cancellation, which is something I absolutely do not want. I'm not going to deal very well with this show over and I legit don't want to cry myself to sleep for days. SO. Let's help save our show! I started a campaign on tumblr/twitter saying everything you can do to help and I hope you guys can RT and/or reblog it: https://twitter.com/aredburnx/status/822160827297964032
> 
> Please, get your friends to watch this show, tell your family, your colleagues, your neighbors, everyone you know to watch it live Monday, let the TV on as background noise if they can. Let's try to trend #RenewTimeless and #Timeless during the episode. Let's show the powers that be what we are capable of!
> 
> PS: Sorry I haven't answered to all of your comments, but it's been a little crazy these past few days.

Lucy had collapsed on her bed and completely blacked out the moment her head hit the pillow. She was exhausted, both mentally and physically and even her mind in turmoil with so many thoughts and worries hadn’t been enough to keep her awake. It was hard to believe it had been only 24 hours since the rug had been pulled from under her and her life had been turned upside down.

Her house and her bed had been so familiar it had been easy to close her eyes and let exhaustion take over. Not even dreams had plagued her sleep.

When she woke up the sun was already shining through the curtains, rays of sun bathing half the bed in golden light. Lucy stretched lazily, checking out the clock and sighing satisfied that she had managed to sleep until past 8am without anyone calling her to go save the day. She stayed in bed for a few more moments, appreciating the peace that hadn’t been part of her life for a while until a thought broke through the silence of her bliss like a confused bird smacking against a glass window: _Charlie_.

Lucy groaned, remembering the past few hours as they came crashing down on her like a train wreck. It was still so hard to process she was going to have a child with Wyatt in the future. She had always wanted kids, being a mother was something that had always been in the back of her mind, just waiting for the right moment to happen, for the right man to come along that would sweep her off her feet for the first time.

It never happened. She had met many men along her life that made her feel the primal pull of attraction, men she wanted in her bed and men she had a great time with outside of it, but never someone that made her think _this is the one, this is the guy I can spend my life with_. Had she felt like that with Noah? Did she dream of having children with him? How could she feel absolutely nothing for him now if he was the man she chose to spend her life with in this timeline?

Time… time was something that Lucy had found out was nothing but an ocean when you felt like drowning; deep in the sea you couldn’t tell which way was up, the water pulled you down as much as it pulled you up and time was like the waves crashing, growing and gaining force the closer it came to shore with her there in the middle, trying to break through the surface, realizing that while she tried to grasp the present, the past was grasping at her as well.

Would she have ever met Wyatt if not for time travel? Would their paths cross somewhere eventually? Would Charlie come to exist if not for Mason Industries? She couldn’t pretend Wyatt didn’t make her think what it would be like to wake up in his bed, to feel his hand on the back of her neck again, to press her lips against his and this time go further than a simple brush for an audience.

She wanted _more_.

Lucy took a deep breath and let it out slowly, frustrated with how her thoughts had been going down the same path for a while now. She got up from the bed and went to the bathroom for a much deserved shower, hoping the hot water would wash away her troubling thoughts.

When she went downstairs her mother had already made breakfast and was pouring herself a cup of coffee while she checked the newspaper. Her mother gave her a look that let her know she’d be getting an earful again for her leaving in the middle of the night, for leaving teaching for a strange job that made her work crazy hours, for the calls in the middle of a conversation, for the secrecy of what she was doing.

Lucy took a deep breath to prevent a tight and frustrated groan from leaving her lips and smile at her mother. She had felt reinvigorated after the shower and finally being dressed in clean clothes           and she already had too many stressful problems in her life, dealing with her mother was definitely not one she wanted to have a headache over.

“Finally you grace us with your presence.”

“Mom…”

“Lucy, you cannot possibly think what you’re doing is normal. Leaving in the middle of the night for work isn’t worth whatever they’re paying you.”

She knew her mother was simply worried about her, it showed in her voice whenever they fought about what Lucy was doing, it was on her mother’s face when they didn’t fight over it. But Lucy was tired. She had a sister her mother didn’t remember, a healthy mother that shouldn’t be here, a madman who wanted to kill anyone on his way to avenge his dead family, she had to protect history so no one else would lose someone they loved, a man she was starting to feel solid, deep feelings for and a child that called her mommy and looked at her as if she was all the answers the universe had.

And a fiancée she was trying to pretend didn’t exist despite the fact she kept his ring in the bottom of her purse.

“I don’t want to fight about this. Can we please talk about something else?”

“Fine.” Frustration was evident in her mother’s voice but Lucy was still thankful she was dropping the issue. “Noah called.”

Too soon to celebrate.

“Really?” Lucy picked up some of the newspaper that was on the counter and poured herself a cup of coffee, trying to play off as interested in what her mother had to say when she didn’t much care about Noah at the moment, especially when he had called the wrong Preston.

“He wanted to know how you’re doing. Lucy he’s your fiancée, the least you could do is treat him with respect.”

“I’m treating him with respect.” She sounded like a child that had been caught in the act and was trying to prove she wasn’t stealing the cookie by stomping her foot and frowning at the absurd accusation. She had barely given Noah a thought these past few days.

“I don’t know what happened, and I’d very much like to know because you used to tell me everything, but you can’t keep doing this to him. If you want to break up, even though I’m completely against it, then do it already and stop stringing him along. I raised you better than this.”

Lucy was stunned by her mother’s words and simply stared at her while she let it sink in the fact she had just been chastised and actually deserved it. Her mother seemed to be very fond of Noah and that only piled up on the list of why she couldn’t break up with him even though she had absolutely no feelings for him whatsoever. It wasn’t his face she saw when she closed her eyes, or his lips she still felt brushing against her, leaving fire ablaze whenever she remembered the feel of them.

“I don’t want to hurt him, mom.”

The silence that fell between them should have warned Lucy that her mother wasn’t done, but was just in the process of organizing her questioning.

“Did you meet someone else?”

The question hit her like a brick of walls and Lucy almost left the mug slip from her hand. “No!” Her mother gave her disbelieving look, raised eyebrows and mouth closed in a tight line. “I didn’t leave him because of another man. I promise.” And she hadn’t. How could she tell her mother she simply didn’t know him anymore? Didn’t remember meeting him, their first date, what had attracted her to him, what had made her say _yes_ to his marriage proposal.

She needed to get away from her mother’s judgmental look and from the thoughts invading her mind because of this conversation. Because they were all about Wyatt. And the child they’d make. Because he _could_ be a man she’d leave someone for.  For the first time since Mason Industries requested her services she wished they’d call to tell her Flynn had taken the Mothership somewhere so far back up in history she’d need to stay there for a few days.

Lucy had left her phone and purse on the kitchen counter the previous night so she reached for them with the intent of checking her phone and maybe coming up with some excuse to leave but when she lighted it up she saw a text from Wyatt. She focused on it instead of her mother and her heart dropped fast into the pit of her core from the content of his message.

_Come over as soon as you can._

Oh no. Had something happened to Charlie?

“Mom, I have to go.”

“It’s Saturday.”

“It’s not work related. I agreed to meet someone and completely forgot about it.” She said distracted, her heart racing several beats faster than it should. She grabbed her things and kissed her mother on the cheek on her way out of the kitchen.

“At least think about what we talked. You needed to do something about Noah.”

“I will. I promise.” She yelled from the doorway and left the house in a hurry.

She made it to Wyatt’s place in record time, not even worried about a speed ticket. Her mind was boiling with so many thoughts and possibilities that she was in no state to worry about anything else. She was surprised to realize that the possibility of Charlie disappearing or being hurt again had sent her into despair.

“What happened? Is Charlie ok?” Lucy asked the moment Wyatt had opened the door.

“She’s fine.” He stepped aside to let her in and Lucy saw Charlie lying on the floor, the cushions from the couch all piled up against her back while she watched TV. Her face was screwed up in a frown, as if she was so upset with something that not even Wile E. Coyote was making her laugh when he failed to catch Roadrunner.

Charlie turned when she heard they walk in and immediately got up, running towards Lucy. “Mommy.”  She whimpered, her voice weepy and a pout on her lips as she hugged Lucy tight and hid her face in the crook of her neck. Lucy picked her up and gave Wyatt a hard look, wondering what the hell had happened in the few hours she was gone to make her so upset.

“Charlie, why don’t you go back to watching TV while me and Lu-uh, your mom talk?” Wyatt choked on the words, correcting himself at last minute as he did his best to make this as familiar for Charlie as possible, and Lucy appreciated it even if she was upset herself and anxious to know how the night had gone.

Charlie nodded and let go of Lucy’s neck as she was put down again. “Can I have crayons?”

“I don’t think I have any, sorry.” Because in a household with no children there was nothing for a child and Lucy made a mental note to purchase some items for Charlie later. “But I have some pens.” Wyatt went to the desk by the window and picked up a few colored pens – black, red and blue – and handed them to Charlie along with some white sheets of paper. She lay back down on the floor and proceeded to start drawing, a frown still on her face.

Wyatt pulled Lucy by the arm to the kitchen, out of earshot from the child and leaned against the counter, crossing his arms in a tight posture. “She had a nightmare last night. Woke up screaming so loud I got up gun drawn. When she saw me she freaked out.” Wyatt uncrossed his arms and ran his fingers through his hair, a nervous motion Lucy was starting to learn. “I had never seen anyone so scared and I just…”

“You felt everything, as if her pain was inside of you.” Lucy completed his sentence, knowing what he was going to say. They stared at each other and the world seemed to stop spinning around them suddenly, and Lucy felt like falling, like a child who had twisted around and round and round her arms open and was now trying to catch her balance.

That’s what Wyatt made her feel, she realized; that moment you decided to stop spinning and the world was out of axis while you tried to stand still. Wyatt was the dizziness that came afterwards.

“I know how that feels,” she told him in a low voice, as if she was talking mostly to herself than to Wyatt.

Then Wyatt sobered up, the look he had shared with her of a secret only they knew changed to a serious gaze. “She remembers what happened to me. She saw it all. I got shot right in front of her and she knows who did it.”

Lucy gasped and stepped closer to Wyatt, her hand reaching out instinctively to grasp his arm. “She told you that?”

Wyatt nodded, his gaze flickered to the door and then back to Lucy. “She said she heard you say it was Rittenhouse.”

“If Rittenhouse did this, if they are after us in the future...” Lucy’s voice held a desperate timbre, shaking at the edges of her whispered words, as if they were sharing dangerous secret. She realized they were by learning Rittenhouse one day would turn the hunt around and they’d be the hunted instead.

Her fingers closed tighter around Wyatt’s arm, understanding why he looked so tense, why Charlie seemed so upset and Lucy blamed herself for not spending the night, for not being there to hold Charlie tight when she woke up screaming, for not making sure this child’s – her child- sanity was in perfect condition. What did she expect of a child that had been shot, watched her father die and been put inside a machine that could have taken her anywhere? Lucy had been stupid, irresponsible and had abandoned her daughter for the second time in 24 hours.

She felt Wyatt rest is hand gently on her shoulder, rubbing the curve of her arm, his thumb pressing down over the skin of her neck. “Hey, it’s not your fault.”

“I should have been here.”

“She’d still have a nightmare.”

“But she wouldn’t be alone. I should have protected her better.” And she didn’t mean now. The present was still theirs, still being built with every choice they made. Was the future rearranging itself or simply falling into the right place?

Wyatt didn’t say anything and the silence stretched for seconds, and she noticed the little things around them: the voices from the television low in the other room, the hum of the fridge, the drip-drip on the sink from the faucet that hadn’t been shut tight, the sound of her speeding heart as she stared at Wyatt, the sheer intimacy of their hands on each other’s body as they stood so much closer than mere colleagues should. Oh, they were past that, the strings formed around them from saving each other’s lives so often tightened their connection, transformed them into people that shared the same world nobody else did. And now they shared a child.

Wyatt wasn’t pulling away, he held her gaze, his hand had stopped rubbing against her skin and his breathing had become a little deeper and she could see, _she could see_ he was leaning into her. Or was she who was leaning into him? If she closed her eyes would he lean in faster? Would he press his lips to her and this time allow their bodies to touch?

She wouldn’t know, because before she could make a decision her phone rang and broke the moment. Wyatt removed his hand from her shoulder and crossed his arms again, looking away.

Lucy fished for her phone inside her pocket and checked the caller ID: It was Mason Industries. She needed to come over immediately, Flynn had taken the Mothership. “It was Agent Christopher.”

When she hung she found herself in an awkward silence that stretched for a few seconds until Wyatt’s phone started ringing and he left to answer it. Had they almost kissed? Lucy’s memory was starting to get hazy and she wasn’t sure if it was only her deep rooted desire of feeling his lips and hands on her that that was messing with her mind, or if it did almost happen.

One thing she did know: these 'almosts' were becoming too constant for her and it'd be only a matter of time until she crossed this invisible line before they were both ready for it.


	10. Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, it's been 2 weeks since I last updated but I hit a writer's block more or less (I knew what I wanted I just wasn't able to write it down) plus the worry about cancellation plus distracted with other things. And I don't know, I just kind of felt "blah" about this whole thing. I WANT MY SHOW RENEWED DAMNIT. Why is it so hard??
> 
> It took me a while to get to this point in the fanfic and this is something I have been wanting for a while. I tried to incorporate some things from episode 11 and twist it my own way. This is a little long than usual so I hope it makes up for the lack of updates. And the outfit Lucy wears in this is the same from the special promo with Amelia Earheart's parade (I love that outfit).
> 
> Enjoy and please comment. I love hearing your thoughts!!

They go back to July 6, 1928. It had only taken a second for Lucy to recognize the date and it had sent a jolt of excitement through the heavy weight of worry and doubt and concern on her shoulders. She was always eager to meet historical figures she grew up idolizing or that were prominent parts of her studies, which made this ‘saving the world’ job a little easier to bear so going back to Amelia Earheart’s parade and watch the event with her own eyes definitely made her heart do a little flip.

Charlie had been sitting on a chair a little further from where they had been discussing the mission in front of Jiya’s computer, swinging her legs, focused on the game she was playing on Lucy’s cellphone, still looking tense and uncomfortable, the frown Lucy was met with that morning still deep in her forehead. She was dressed in simple brown leggings and a pink shirt with a crown stamped on it. She had wanted a shirt with a pirate and as much as Lucy had wanted to cheer her up she had found nothing similar to a pirate for a girl. Charlie had revealed she wanted to be a pirate so Lucy tried to comfort her she could be a pirate princess and wear the crown on her shirt as such. There was only a shrug and an ‘okay’ for an answer and Lucy figured that’d be the most she’d get for the time being.

The briefing had been quick as they tended to be, not much time waste while Flynn was always a good hour ahead of them, so they had been dismissed to go change. Charlie had followed her around, helping pick the outfit for the trip and while she hadn’t been exactly helpful with her suggestions or even really enthusiastic about it, it had been fun to do it with her. Charlie spent her time playing dress up and tumbling after Lucy in a pair of kitten heels too large for her and by the time she had picked everything she needed Charlie was wearing a skirt over her leggings, pulled up to her chest so it wouldn’t drag on the floor and a bright red jacket that covered her hands and fell to her knees that she had probably found somewhere on the 1980s rack.

Lucy knew she’d have to deal with the ugly, difficult reality of Charlie’s arrival eventually, including the ramifications of a child that had been through a traumatic event. But she wasn’t ready to do it right now. She didn’t _know_ how to do it. She had even looked up the symptoms for PTSD in children, but she hadn’t been with Charlie long enough to detect her behavior or to even know what was normal and what wasn’t. By being seven years older than Amy, Lucy had had watched her sister throw temper tantrums quite a few times while they were growing up, but her mother had always been the one with the soothing touch and firm voice who knew exactly how to handle Amy.

Now Lucy felt as if she was completely adrift in a wild storm, trying to open her lifeboat without instructions.  

“You okay?”

Wyatt’s soft voice drifted through her turmoil and brought her back. “Yeah. Just thinking.” She breathed in deep, then let it out slowly, her hands clumsily trying to fit the right halves of the seat belt, but her mind was so far out of this simple task that by the time she realized she hadn’t l clipped it close Wyatt had already taken over.

“Worrying?” He leaned over, gently removing the straps from Lucy’s hands and fixing the seat belt for her.

“Aren’t you?” Wyatt’s closeness was almost intoxicating, the smell of soap and cologne invading her nose and awakening her sense to his proximity. He gave a firm tug to the straps and leaned back against his seat, clipping his own seat belt.

He gave her a serious, even look, his hands gripping his chair when the Lifeboat started to shake and took a deep breath too. “I have no idea what to do. I’m making it up as I go.” Then his trademark smirk, the left side of his face lifting up until Lucy’s heart did a little flip. His usual mischievous smirk didn’t hold much of the same spark, it was just there to hide the fact he probably felt as distressed as she did.

Before she could reply the world around them started spinning until everything became a blur and gravity disappeared, and suddenly Lucy was on a free fall, her body being jolted forward while her insides were a little slower to catch up. Time slapped back with another jolt and Lucy took a moment to reorient herself.  She knew they were in the past because it felt different, as if gravity was denser, as if the air around them held just a little bit more resistance against them.

Amelia Eartheart’s parade was even more glamorous then she has expected. She had seen the few picture of the event, had imagined herself how it must have been to the people – the women- from this period to be able to witness and celebrate the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. But all the pictures in the world wouldn’t be able to truly represent the euphoria of the American people who crowded the streets of New York to welcome the arrival or their newest hero.

Lucy found herself completely astonished at the amount of people yelling, whistling, holding up flags and encouraging their children to cheer on. They had arrived in time to see Amelia’s slowly make her way down the street, waiving at the people pushing each other to be closer to her.  She tried to push her way through the crowd and have a front line view of _Amelia Earheart_ , the uproar of everyone around them so contagious her mouth was starting to hurt from smiling so much. 

There she was, holding a bouquet of flowers, sitting on the backseat of a Cadillac with the Mayor and Lucy’s smile grew wider, her heart fluttered inside her chest. She turned to Wyatt to tell him it was _Amelia Earheart oh my god_ and found him already staring at her. Shredded paper was falling all around them, covering the people and the ground in a soft layer of white and it looked beautiful. Everyone was cheering on her arrival, pulling and pushing to get closer, paper falling from the sky like rain and she stood there smiling at Wyatt feeling the most content she had felt in a long time.

Then he reached a hand up towards her face and she held her breath, her entire body shaking in anticipation until he slid his fingers gently down her hair and pulled her hand back to show her a piece of paper that had gotten stuck there.

She wanted to kiss him; wanted to throw herself into his arms and kiss that stupid smirk off his face, kiss the dimple on his right cheek and slid her lips down to his, to keep her mouth pressed to his until his tongue touched hers and she forgot her name.

Lucy was suddenly pushed sideways when the crowd getting closer to catch a glimpse of Amelia Earheart as she came closer and she lost sight of Wyatt momentarily, a couple of people coming in between them.

“Lucy?” Wyatt called loudly, and he sounded a little apprehensive.

She tried to push in between the people that started coming forward, but the crowd grew thicker, pushing them a little more apart by the second. A curse was leaving her lips while she considered her options and she felt a hand grab her arm. She turned to it, relieved Wyatt had managed to break through the people to her avoiding Lucy of having to either look for them or go back to the Lifeboat when her eyes met the wrong face.

It wasn’t Wyatt, it was Flynn.

“Come with me.”

“Wyatt!” Lucy screamed as loud as she could as panic started to settle in while Flynn pulled her away towards the opposite side of the crowd and a gun pressed against her back stopped her from screaming Wyatt’s name again.

“Just do as I say and no one gets hurt.”

She didn’t believe him, but the gun to her back and Wyatt’s muffled calls for her made her afraid enough to stay quiet. She had seen Flynn be ruthless enough to know he’d shoot Wyatt or anyone in his way if the need arose and no one should get hurt.

He pulled her until the crowd thinned, down a few blocks away from the festivities and into an alley that curved into a darkened corned. Her panic rose to terror when she saw there was no one around, or no windows to scream to. Would he kill her? Did he want something from her? If he did, could she stall him until Wyatt found her? How much did a bullet wound hurt?

Flynn stopped at the very back of the alley and turned them around so they were facing the way they had come from, his gun now pressed against her side and his hand tightening around her arm. Then Wyatt and Rufus stepped into the entrance of the alleyway with Flynn’s tugs following closely behind – guns pointing at them.

“What the hell are you doing?” That sight of the guys being threatened turned Lucy’s fear to anger and she tried to struggle out of Flynn’s grasp.

“I really don’t want to hurt any of you, but honestly? You’re a bit of a pain in the ass. We are all fighting for the same thing here.”

“You’re killing people!” Lucy seethed, pulling her arm from him, which resulted in his fingers pressing down harder until it hurt.

“I’m stopping Rittenhouse, and you’re going to help me.”

“Flynn, whatever you’re planning, think about it again. We’re not helping you kill innocent people.” Wyatt had his arms down his sides, his eyes going from Flynn to Lucy constantly, evaluating the possibilities. Lucy knew he was a good shot, but there’s no way he’d be able to grab his gun, shoot Flynn and take down the men behind him before everyone else got hurt. They weren’t outnumbered, but they had the advantage.

“Oh, I don’t need you. I only need Lucy.” Flynn said with a hint of satisfaction in his voice gave his men a half nod.

She didn’t expect the gunshot. She expected Flynn’s tugs to knock Wyatt and Rufus out, to maybe struggle with them, make a distraction while Flynn took her wherever he wanted to take her. There was no sound of thunder cracking or a car backfiring. It came without a sound; the silencer preventing the usual explosion of a gun going off warning them somebody had been shot. Instead she watched as Wyatt jolted forward, and then doubled over.

Lucy stopped breathing, stopped thinking. The world around her seemed to spin as if she was back inside the Lifeboat, and she felt too dizzy for a moment to even consider running to him. Then it all snapped back like elastic pulled tight and then let go. “Wyatt!”

He looked up at her, his face screwed up in pain, but he didn’t look like someone who was about to die. His right hand was pressed tight against his left shoulder and Rufus was beside him, helping him up, spitting out a stream of curses.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” She had never seen Rufus this pissed off before. Not fear, just anger. He looked ready to attack the guy that had shot Wyatt but didn’t want to let him go.

“Wyatt!” She called his name again, watching in horror blood bloom on his shirt and darken the gray texture of his suit.

“I’m fine.” He answered between gritted teeth, as if even speaking made the bullet wound hurt.

“Yes, he is,” Flynn interrupted, “A simple wound to the shoulder. Nothing important was hit and he’ll be fine in no time. It’s almost superficial. Isn’t that right, Master Sergeant Logan?”

“I’ll live.”

“This was a warning. The next time I won’t be so thoughtful.” As if he felt confident enough, Flynn pulled his gun away from Lucy and put back on its holster, but didn’t let her go. “Now, me and Lucy are going to have a little chat.”

Lucy wanted to yell his name again, wanted to pull away from Flynn and run towards her team, but the guns still pointed at Wyatt and Rufus and Flynn’s warning still rang in her head. He had shot Wyatt without a moment’s consideration and had seemed to plan this. So she let him drag her as Wyatt and Rufus called for them.

He wouldn’t kill her, that much she was sure of, otherwise he’d have done that already, but what could Flynn possibly want with her? Historical knowledge? She knew nothing of Rittenhouse, definitely no more than he did, so what kind of help could she give him?

They walked for several minutes making their way out of the city and she only guessed the time by the way the scenery around them started to change from building to industrial landscape. By the time her feet started to ache she asked: “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere special, you’ll see.”

And that was the only conversation they had for the rest of the way because Flynn ignored all of her questions.

They reached a nondescript warehouse exactly like all the others on the block and when they entered Lucy was met with the Mothership. Her panic started to surface again and she pulled back, forcing her feet on the ground to stop him from pushing her inside.

“Relax. I’m not taking you anywhere.”

She didn’t relax.

The warehouse was empty except for the Mothership and the two of them and she started to feel a little more confident. “Where’s Anthony?”

“Sit.” He said in a way of a reply, pulling a chair out and motioning for her to do as he said.

She sat looking around for anything that could serve as a weapon. With only Flynn as a threat her chances of running were a little higher. Could she outrun him? Could she hit him and run faster than he could draw his gun?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of something heavy hitting the surface of the desk next to her. Her eyes snapped to it and she saw it was her journal.

“Come on. Pick it up.”

She didn’t want to touch it, didn’t want to feel the weight of the pages in her hands and let the existence of this object become real, become concrete.

Flynn sighed frustratingly at her refusal to accept something that had already happened in a timeline she never lived and picked the journal back up, opening to a page somewhere towards the end of it. “ _She was conceived in a small bathroom in 1929_.” He started off reading, his eyes leaving the page and focusing on her, studying her reaction.

Lucy’s blood grew cold; her heart kicking off in in the speed of light and her ears started buzzing. She knew what he was talking about the moment the word _conceived_ left his mouth and didn’t want to hear any more of it. “Stop it.”

“ _The mood between us was as grim and consuming like the grey cloud that seemed to have settled above New York after the crash. There was so much desolation around us that I think it started to infect us like a disease, like watching someone you loved fall into depression without you being able to do anything to help_.”

“ _Stop it!”_  Her voice rang inside the warehouse like an echo, repeating itself until it died in the bottom of a dark cave. She shouldn’t know that. She shouldn’t hear anything about a future already woven. She didn’t _want_ to know.

Flynn ripped the page from the journal and gently placed it on the desk, letting her pick it up if she wanted. “You can read it all yourself. It’s a little graphic anyway. For your eyes only.”

He knew. Flynn _knew_ about Charlie. He knew since the beginning and never said anything, never warned her. The bastard, the son of a bitch, the-

“You wouldn’t have believed me.” He said as if reading her mind and she figured her emotions were all over her face. His voice was firm but soft around the edges as if her mistrust hurt him.

She remained silence, her hand itching to grasp the page lying silently beside her.

Flynn turned the pages of the journal to what seemed to be the last entry and started reading off words she had written in a distant future. “… _the gunshots were so loud in my ears that I thought bullets had hit me, but when I turned I saw Wyatt on the ground, blood already pooling around him, Charlie still in his arms. I felt like the earth had opened below me, pulling me down under the ground and closing back up over me, suffocating me until my lungs hurt, until my heart bled out. I felt dead, too. Charlie had been silent, as if stunned by the sound and the pain that prevented her from moving. I think that’s what saved her life that day_.”

He closed the journal and the silence stretched between them, painful, loud, empty, like the words that bled from that page.

Lucy wanted to cry, wanted to forget this life Mason Industries gave her. Wanted go back to when her only worries were a sick mother and a frustrated career. “How can you be this heartless?”

He laughed -a deep, loud laugh that held no mirth, no happiness. “My wife and _five year old_ child were murdered. I think I have the right to be cold.” He sounded regretful, sad. As if this person he became wasn’t the one he wanted to be and even through the anger she felt a pang of sympathy. “You wrote this so you would remember, so your past you would know what started this mission. I hope now you understand what’s at stake.”

She couldn’t help him kill innocent people to achieve his goal. She wanted Amy back so bad and the thought of Charlie dying or disappearing without her ever knowing what happened made her heart ache, made her existence seem worthless, but she was still just a speck in the universe and her wants couldn’t be placed above the lives of others. Did she feel that way when she watched Wyatt die and thought Charlie was dead, too?

Instead she said, “I understand.” Because she did. It just didn’t mean she’d follow his steps.

Flynn held the journal carelessly in one hand and waved the other towards the direction of the entrance. “You can go.”

“What?” That was it? He had shot Wyatt, threatened her team, pointed a gun at her only to bring her here and torture her? All he wanted was to throw on her face how Rittenhouse was slowly ripping her life apart?

Her anger and confusion probably showed on her face because in response he said “I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

He let her leave without issues.

Lucy had stood from the chair and turned to leave, then after a moment of hesitation she grabbed the page that had been left abandoned on the desk and crumpled it inside her fist. She didn’t want to read it, and yet she couldn’t stop the spark of curiosity.  Flynn watched her go, not moving from his spot, her eyes briefly going to the journal in his hand, wondering why he didn’t just give her the damn thing and being thankful he wasn’t willingly to let her read it all. Would it be of any help if she knew of her future? If her life had been written into those pages, then was it true what Flynn said, that Wyatt’s death was the trigger to eliminate Rittenhouse at the crib? Was that why he insisted they’d work together? Because of a common goal?

A stellar headache was growing in the back of Lucy’s head and she didn’t want to think about anything anymore. She wanted to find Wyatt and Rufus and make sure they were okay, make sure Wyatt’s bullet wound had been superficial and not life threatening.

The walk back seemed to take twice the time she took to reach the warehouse and by the time she found the Lifeboat all she wanted was to get inside it and go home. It was dark, it was cold, she was wearing heels and she was worried sick about Wyatt. She just wanted this day to end.

The Lifeboat was thankfully still where they landed, but it was empty. Were Rufus and Wyatt still being held by Flynn’s men? Were they looking for her? She hadn’t even thought of going anywhere else besides here and since they had agreed to meet back at the Lifeboat if they ever got separated, that’s where Lucy went. And that’s where she would stay until someone showed up. So she leaned against the Lifeboat and waited.

The page still held inside her hand hurt like razor blades; she felt the sharp ends dig into her skin and the words written in her elegant cursive bleed out into her palm. She was glad it was too dark to make out the words because she didn’t know if she was ready for what they had to say.

Eventually she heard the sound of steps and branches cracking underfoot and the indistinctive sound of Wyatt and Rufus bickering and her heart swelled with happiness. “Wyatt? Rufus?” She called out to them, half to alert them of her presence, half to end this wait.

“Lucy?!” Wyatt was the first to call out and he ran to her just as she ran to him, meeting halfway in an embrace.

The moment she threw her arms around him he groaned in pain and she pulled back immediately, eyeing his shoulder. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Wyatt said and put his good arm around her, holding her so tight she sighed contently into his neck, her arms sneaking around his waist carefully not to juggle his bad arm. His palm splayed against her back, his fingers reaching as far out in every direction as they could, pressing her to him, her skin burning where their cheeks touched. He breathed in deeply and she pretended he was breathing her in. “Thank God you’re all right.”

She pulled back after a moment. “I’m okay.” She nodded, her smile honest and relieved.

She hugged Rufus tightly and it felt so good, so warm, so different from Wyatt. It was gentle, the embrace of a friend she cared for deeply, that held no deep under meanings, it wasn’t charged with repressed desires and unspoken feelings.

“What the hell did Flynn want?” Rufus asked when he let her go.

“Torment me? He read stuff off the journal he says I wrote trying to convince me to help him taken down Rittenhouse.”

Wyatt stepped closer to Lucy, invading her personal bubble and his fingers brushed her hand gently to catch her attention. “What did he say?”

Lucy hesitated, wondering if she should tell him. What had it changed for her?

“Lucy?” He urged her, his voice curious, worried and she decided that whatever happened that involved him he had the right to know.

“I watched you die. That was the last entry on the journal.” That was only half of the truth, but she wasn’t ready to share the other half in front of Rufus, at least not before she read everything that was in the cursed page she took.

The silence that surged after her revelation was so heavy it pressed down on her and was finally broken after a few moments when both Rufus and Wyatt spoke at the same time with a weak “oh” from Wyatt and a deep “oh crap,” from Rufus.

“Speaking of the future, don’t you find a little weird Charlie seems to know Jiya but not know me at all?” Rufus cut the tense haze with worries of his own and Lucy had to smile even when his worry was completely well funded. He could be dead by the time Charlie was born, or before she was old enough to remember people.

She didn’t tell him that.

“Maybe Jiya is just cooler than you.” Wyatt poked.

“She _is_ dating me so….” Rufus crossed his arms and took a mock defensive stance.  

“Yeah, I wonder why.”

Before it could turn in to a full out discussion, Lucy cut through their back and forth. “How’s your shoulder?”

“Fine. The dick just wanted to scare us. I’ll be fine in a couple of weeks.”

 She wanted some light so she could inspect the bullet wound herself, even if she understood nothing of it, even if she’d faint if there was any blood on it. She just needed to see it for herself. “Are you sure?”

His voice softened and if it wasn’t so dark she’d have seen his eyes bore into her, a mix of emotions she wouldn’t be able to figure out etched onto them. So all she had was the tingle of his voice caressing her body and his hand squeezing hers. “I promise.”

Rufus opened the hatch of the Lifeboat and declared it was time to go home. So home they went.


	11. Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two fics in a day is kind of a record for me lol. I'm sorry if this feels a little rushed, but either I updated it tonight or only next Wednesday. This chapter is a little long, hopefully till make up for the long wait.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Charlie was standing next to Jiya when they arrived, back in her normal clothes but her face covered in such exaggerated make up that left no doubts she had been playing in the wardrobe dock. She had let go of Jiya’s hand to run down the stairs when she noticed Wyatt and froze in her step, eyes going wide and face going blank. Lucy calling for a medic hadn’t been exactly subtle and helped intensify Charlie’s panic.  She could see the girl shaking even from where she stood halfway across the platform.

_I felt dead, too_.

The words buzzed around inside Lucy’s head like a bad headache and she wondered if that was how this child felt, her blue eyes glued on Wyatt as he was taken away to the med bay, small body frozen in place as if she couldn’t find the strength to move or call out for her father. It was a bizarre sight, to say the least, a sharp contrast of being the smallest person in the room, in pink shirt and bright smeared make up, surrounded by adults in several shades of gray and black who did not understand her worry, but saw her as a scientific project.

Lucy ignored agent Christopher’s questions of _what the hell happened_ and _is everyone okay_ and went straight to Charlie, picking her up, nestling her trembling body against hers and holding her so tight she was surprised the little girl didn’t complain she needed to breathe but instead held her back just as tight. “He’s okay. It was just a scratch. No big deal.”  

She didn’t answer, didn’t nod, wasn’t even crying and Lucy felt panic rising quicker by the second. Was she in shock? Was she going to have a meltdown?

“Charlie?” Lucy asked cautiously, rubbing her daughter’s back in an attempt to comfort her, to relax her until her shaking started to fade.

“Okay,” she answered, her voice a small whisper against Lucy’s neck, but it was enough to make her let out a sigh of relief.

Once Wyatt was back from being looked at Agent Christopher asked for them to debrief and Lucy told her everything she had learned, including what Charlie had told Wyatt. She had omitted the page she had taken from the journal, believing that bit of information wasn’t relevant for the mission, or of any help in catching Flynn. In the end, with the information from Charlie and Flynn, Lucy had concluded that she had sent Charlie back in a desperate attempt to change their present so the future could be saved. That led her to realize she’d have to send Charlie back in the machine eventually, so whatever changes they did to the present, the little girl would be in her right timeline in the future so the ripple of time would affect her.

Lucy felt a little sick, a weight pressed against her chest heavy enough to make breathing difficult. Things didn’t look very good for either of them.

“I really need a drink.” Rufus declared, closing his locker with a little more force than necessary Lucy noticed, and when Wyatt’s voice drifted towards them form the staircase that he could use a good shot of whiskey her eyes snapped at him.

“Didn’t the doctor give you antibiotics?”

“I said I could use one, not that I’d take one.” His backtracking gave her some satisfaction but she only leveled a look at him but softened when Charlie ran towards him and hugged him in the middle. Wyatt’s stance softened, he ruffled Charlie’s dark hair and knelt down to be at her eye level. “Picking you up is out of commission for a while, kiddo.” And just pulled her to him, a one arm hug that was met with a tight embrace. 

Since Wyatt couldn’t drink and they couldn’t take a six-year-old to a bar, they had decided to just have an early dinner at a little place close to Wyatt’s home. Rufus had invited Jiya along and the evening had been nice, filled with some laughs despite the recent predicaments. Charlie had insisted on being as close to Wyatt as possible, sitting on his lap and holding one of his hands most of the time, her usual quiet demeanor broken by constant questions: Daddy, does your arm hurt? Daddy, can I have milkshake? Daddy, can we have pancakes for breakfast? Daddy, can I have some glitter? Daddy, will you tell me a story later?

Lucy could feel the underlying tremors to Charlie’s voice, as if talking would reaffirm her of his presence and the way Wyatt played into it she knew he noticed. He held her back with care, his voice soft and clear of any hint of pain, smiling constantly at Charlie. It made her heart fill with something she could only guess was love for this little girl. Watching both of them being so careful and loving to each other, exchanging comfort and reassurance did something to Lucy, as if her whole being had been incomplete until this very moment, as if they had filled a voice she didn’t even realize existed.

She thought back to the letter folded deep inside her purse and could feel it burning even through the leather. She hadn’t read it yet, courage evading her.

“So Charlie,” Rufus’ voice broke through Lucy’s avoidance of the words waiting to come to life and she shifted her attention to him. “Jiya’s pretty cool huh? How do you know her?”

Lucy glared at him and she saw Wyatt do the same with the corner of her eyes, tightening her arm around Charlie as if the physical chain around her would somehow protect her of whatever memory this question could bring.

She was pretty blasé when she answered “She’s my godmother,” the _duh_ in the end of her sentence unspoken but pretty loud.  

Jiya gasped but recovered immediately. “Of course,” because she _should_ know that, at least in front of Charlie.

Lucy remained silent, digesting this new information. It made sense, the way Charlie seemed to be so comfortable with her, but somehow it made Lucy dejected. She liked Jiya a lot and if she had to pick anyone to be the godmother of her child it could be her, if her sister as still gone. Which meant she hadn’t gotten Amy back.

“I saw your pictures at aunt Jiya’s house.” Charlie said in a way of apology, as if her not knowing him was somehow wrong and Lucy had to smile at how sweet this child was. It also meant she didn’t know Rufus and that seemed to concern him.

They dropped the subject and eventually Charlie started to yawn in between bites of food and hushed conversation between all of them. It was the cue they needed to say their goodbyes. Charlie ended up falling asleep in the backseat of Wyatt’s car on the drive to his place and didn’t wake up through the trip up the stairs and as Lucy put her to bed. The whole ordeal was rather quick because of it, which Lucy was very grateful for, she had too much going on in her head and the journal entry seemed to glow at her like a neon light, she couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

Wyatt was sitting on the couch trying to remove his jacket when she came out of Charlie’s room and she rushed to his side. “You shouldn’t be moving your arm.”

“I need to get my clothes off.”

The comment made Lucy blush because it elicited thoughts she didn’t need to be having about him. Thankfully the jacket was only draped over his left shoulder so not much juggling was necessary. Once the garment was off, Wyatt leaned back against the couch and sighed.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just tired.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes and Lucy wondered if this was a silent cue she should leave so he could sleep.  She stood there, watching him, hesitating. Should she just go?

“Can I use your bathroom?” She asked instead, caught in that place where she didn’t know if she had the liberty to just roam around his apartment without having to ask, or if she was still at the stage that required asking. Everything was suddenly very awkward for her and she didn’t know why, considering the child sleeping in the next room.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

In the safety of closed doors and no prying eyes, Lucy sat on the closed toilet seat and pulled out the folded page that felt heavier and heavier with each second that passed. She had to read it; she couldn’t avoid this for much longer if she wanted to tell Wyatt.

She took a deep breath and unfolded it. The words jumped out, every letter a hard ink against the white paper. She read it on:

“ _She was conceived in a small bathroom in 1929_.

_The mood between us was as grim and consuming like the grey cloud that seemed to have settled above New York after the crash. There was so much desolation around us that I think it started to infect us like a disease, like watching someone you loved fall into depression without you being able to do anything to help_. _So I felt like being a hero and Wyatt felt like I had no right to. Who decides whose life is worth more?_ _The shot had come from a man we hadn’t seen hiding and Wyatt was shooting the other direction, so I did what any sensible person would do: I pushed him out of the way and got shot instead._

_“The funny thing is, being shot doesn’t feel like being shot. It just burns. The bullet hadn’t really hurt anything, just grazed my skin but it was enough to bleed. Wyatt shot the man on instinct then turned to me, eyes wide with worry and anger, immediately examining the non-wound. I didn’t realize I hadn’t been really hurt until we were back at our hotel room and Wyatt had cleaned up my arm to reveal a small strip of burned skin._

_“He was furious with me and I got furious back and we broke into a heated argument of how the other didn’t have the right to die. I realize now how absolutely ridiculous that fight was, but it had resulted in the most wonderful, most beautiful child life could give me. She didn’t come from a planned family, but from Wyatt’s fist hitting the wall of the tiny bathroom we barely fit in together, then his immediate regret for losing his temper and profusely apologizing with tired voice and a soul heavy with the love he carried for me. ‘You could have died’, he said, looking at me with eyes so blue and so deep and so desperate that I kissed him. At that moment I didn’t even think about how reckless we had been, how irresponsible. Rufus could be back any moment, I was still in pain, we had no protection and the thought of the consequences of something happening in the past that would be carried on to the present didn’t even cross my mind. We were still tiptoeing around whatever was happening between us._

_All I could think about were his mouth under my blouse, hands under my skirt as his fingers moved the way he learned I liked, the way he felt in my hands when I pulled his pants down, the way he moved inside me in sweet desperation until my bottom ached from the edges of the sink digging into my skin._

_I write this so I’ll know – you- will know that everything happened like a reel of film segments, moments put together until the entire picture was done. You must know that you will be loved and you will love in a way you never expected to. That your life will be worth nothing compared to what awaits you. So you must keep going. You have to fight.”_

Lucy read it again, then a third time, trying to process the words as a real letter to herself and not a page stolen from some foreign novel that she picked at the library at random. The entry felt unreal, as if the person depicted in it had lived a life that she could never fathom. The Wyatt she knew now was so far from being the person she would write about in the future that Lucy’s chest felt a little hollow, wishing upon herself _now_ this all-consuming love, the force of the ocean in a storm when its waves come crashing on shore, taking everything back with the tide. Could it ever happen? Did the Lucy from this timeline feel this with Noah?

Lucy took a deep breath and folded the page back ignoring the ache in her chest the words had left.

When she came to the living room again Wyatt had his bare feet on the coffee table and the tv was on. She considered her options: either she told him about the letter or she didn’t, and right now she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do.

“Sit down, Lucy. You look ready to pass out, are you okay?” He made a motion to stand so she nodded and sat next to him.

“I don’t want your death to be the trigger for everything. I don’t want you to die.” At least this admission didn’t seem too compromising and it was something she felt okay with revealing, because it was true: she couldn’t bear the thought of him dying, much less _watch_ him die. “When Flynn read that entry, I felt her pain.” _Her_ pain, as if the Lucy from the journal was someone else, someone who didn’t exist, even though Charlie was right there next to them, real and solid.

“Hey,” Wyatt reached out and grasped her hands, stopping her from squeezing each other and his touch had an immediate result. “It’s not going to happen. I’m alive, and I intend on staying this way.” His voice was gentle, soft, comforting and she almost believed him. “Did Flynn hurt you?”

“You mean besides the obvious? No.” She didn’t mean to be harsh with him, but it came out that way without her intent. She was tired, as she seemed to be all the time lately, her head was still swirling, and Wyatt’s arm still inside the sling didn’t help matters at all. “How’s your arm?”

He raised his eyebrows but let her change the subject. “It’s fine. Just a little sore.”

She didn’t believe him and insisted on checking for herself, so he let her pull the bandage off and assure herself that there was no bleeding or strange swelling to his wound. Once she checked it twice she was satisfied and leaned back against the couch, her head turned towards him. Wyatt did the same as he stared at her and she briefly had a flashback to when they were in the tiny bed together back in Bonnie and Clyde’s cabin. They were just as close now, legs brushing, and hands somehow in each other’s. He would love her, she thought, somewhere in the future, he would look at her as if she was the most important thing to him.

She looked down at his fingers gently brushing her palm and suddenly the mood shifted in the room, became heavier, filled with all the things she needed to tell him, all the things he seemed to want to tell her. Lucy looked back at him and before she could process what was happening his lips were on hers and every thought flew from her mind.

His mouth was warm, pressing firmly on hers and she let him, welcomed the soft slide of his lips against hers. Her hand went to his cheek, resting against him in encouragement, then gasped when she felt his hand press against the skin of her back, pulling her to him. She let him guide her, let him pull her closer, let him lick her bottom lip and silently ask for permission, let him taste her mouth, her tongue, angled her head for better access of his lips to hers, tried to ignore the fire burning in her veins with every brush of his fingers against the skin of her hip, her lower back, her stomach. He was handsy, and she _liked it_.

Until the moment was interrupted by a childish giggle, making Lucy pull back quickly and look in the direction of the sound.

Charlie was standing at the entrance of the living room, both hands covering her mouth in a failed attempt to hide her smile.

“Charlie! Why are you up?” Lucy sounded a little more frustrated than she wanted to let on, but she figured it probably showed on her face.

“I can’t sleep.”

Lucy looked over at Wyatt and immediately knew the moment was over. He had leaned back away from her, a hand rubbing his face and running through his hair in what looked like his own version of frustrated. There was a nice tint of pink to his cheeks and she wanted to smile for being the one to put it there.

She got up from the couch and went to Charlie, gently pushing her towards her room. Even if she wasn’t asleep, it was far past her bed time – or at least what she was sure she would have set as a bed time had she really been a mother.

Charlie didn’t put up a fight, but went back to bed by herself, sliding under the covers and waiting for Lucy to do something she had no idea what. So Lucy sat next to her daughter and let out a deep sigh.

“Mommy, is the lightning bolt back?”

Lucy’s attention snapped to Charlie, her blue eyes staring at her with curiosity and Wyatt’s trademark smirk splattered over her face. “What?”

“You said you knew Daddy was the one and only forever because you felt the lightning bolt.” Of course she was probably exaggerating in ways young children do, but her words still filled Lucy’s chest with something she couldn’t quite understand.

“Oh.” She thought for a moment, looking for the right words, but then wondered if a child, her child, shouldn’t just hear the truth. Why try to make up a story if she probably heard the real one many times before? Whatever the real story was. “The lightning bolt never leaves. Sometimes it just needs a little nudge because it’s asleep. Like little girls should be at this time of the day.”

Charlie giggled, a sound that Lucy was starting to cherish, especially because her mood seemed to have really shifted from the somber cloud that had hovered above the girl for the last couple of days. She closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into the covers. “Good night, Mommy.”

Lucy left after _good night_ and brief brush of lips to her Charlie’s head.

Wyatt was standing when she went back to the living room and the memory of what they had been doing only moments before hit her with full force. He looked out of place in his own home, unsure of what he should say, hands inside his jeans pockets in an obvious attempt to keep a respectful distance. Lucy’s momentary happiness faded into disappointment.

“I should go,” she said as she picked up her purse and jacket, making her way to the door.  She felt like a teenager again, breaking the 10 pm curfew her mother had sat because she was kissing a boy and completely lost track of time.

He only nodded, didn’t follow her to the door. “Is Charlie okay?”

“Yeah, she went back to sleep.”  Lucy crossed the threshold, adjusting the strap of her purse on her shoulder, hesitating. She knew he felt something for her, there was no denying that, but whatever he felt he kept holding back because of Jessica, because of his guilt of what happened to her. She knew that nothing could happen between them until he accepted his past and moved on, but his kiss and the words she had read taunted her, mocked her. “Wyatt,” she started, a hand on the open door, grabbing the doorknob for some kind of strength. “Charlie wasn’t just an accident, if you ever thought about that.” Because she had before everything, wondered how she could have a child doing what they did, risking their lives constantly. She _had_ been an accident, but not from two people who didn’t know what they were doing. She looked at him, straight into his eyes, “We did love each other. _Will_ love each other.”

She closed the door before she could see his reaction and left quickly, because right now she needed to settle her thoughts, needed to be her own person just for a little while.


End file.
